


Zenith

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cursed Castiel, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2015, Dreamwalking, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt Castiel, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:46:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 9 AU. Still relatively new to humanity, Castiel struggles with both Dean’s confusing behaviour and the loss of his angelic faculties. When a pissed-off witch restores his ability to see the supernatural, the curse seems like a blessing. He can help his friends again – and when Dean’s lies blow up in his face and Sam is once again left hovering between life and death, Cas is happy to be useful. But his abilities keep getting stronger, and they might just be more than a human brain can handle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cas + supernatural _Flowers for Algernon_ = this, I guess.
> 
> This fic is a bit of a fix-it, but some of the skeevier events of S9 are still present, and they're viewed quite sympathetically in the narrative, since it's all from Cas's POV and he's very sympathetic towards Dean in canon. So... be aware of that if it's likely to creep you out?
> 
> Many thanks to my betas, [aerynsun5](http://aerynsun5.livejournal.com), [amberdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberdreams), and [rons_pigwidgeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rons_pigwidgeon/) for all their help. And many, many thanks to the amazing [kuwlshadow](http://kuwlshadow.livejournal.com), who stepped in to pinch-hit when my original artist was forced to drop out, like a DCBB fairy godmother. Please go check out the art masterpost [here](http://kuwlshadow.livejournal.com/14090.html)!
> 
> Translation into Russian by [Muldi](http://muldi.tumblr.com/) now available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4212158)!

 

 

 

“So, uh. Sorry your date was a bust.”

Castiel turns to Dean in surprise. They have made the drive back from Nora’s house in near silence. Dean didn’t question him when he climbed into the Impala, and Castiel didn’t ask where they were going, too heavy with exhaustion to do anything but let himself be pulled along in Dean’s wake.

Now, in the parking lot outside a seedy motel, Dean sits very still in the driver’s seat of the Impala, still gripping the steering wheel tightly. The scrolling red neon sign picks out the edges of his profile.

 _Chiaroscuro_. Castiel learned the term from a library book, picked up during those first few days of human wandering because the picture of an angel on the cover made him ache for home, and discarded because the ones inside did nothing to assuage that aching. He read a little before he discarded the book, though—enough to know that artists employ the technique deliberately, a little light in the darkness somehow showing brighter than full day.

Dean is avoiding his eyes. Something in that makes Castiel wonder if he really meant what he just said. Perhaps—as is so often the case—there is something hidden between the lines here, in the silences, that Castiel is supposed to pick up on, or to pick up on and then pretend not to hear. What it is, he couldn’t say.

Many things are obscure to him lately. Heaven, of course, hidden from his human eyes. The voices of his brethren no longer call to him, and though he knows many among them would wish him dead, their silence muffles him like a heavy blanket. But humans, too, are opaque.

Castiel has never understood their customs fully. Even after his years with Dean and Sam, he finds himself wrong-footed in interactions, puzzling over missed references while the conversation moves on without him.

Before, he had a higher clarity. Even when the nuances of communication eluded him, he could see the human soul, bright as a beacon. The essence of the humans in his charge, visible to him even under layers of resentment and annoyance, of defensiveness and distrust and fear. Even when he was the cause of those things, that light reached him. Broke through Naomi’s hold on him in Lucifer’s crypt; granted him one last moment in which to make his apologies before the Leviathan took hold. He never had to doubt it.

Now, it seems, he has little but doubt.

He studies Dean’s face for clues as to his true meaning, or the appropriate response, but finds none. “It wasn’t a date,” he offers, at length. “That was my mistake.”

Dean opens his mouth as if to reply, seems to think better of it, and gets out of the car.

 

 

\----

 

He leaves the motel room door open behind him, and after a moment, Castiel follows him in. He closes the door quietly.

Dean crouches in front of the refrigerator and retrieves two beers, pops off the caps, and hands one to Castiel without a word. It’s a ritual he has watched Dean and Sam conduct countless times: confirmation of a hunt successfully concluded. Or concluded, at least.

There doesn’t seem to have been anything particularly successful about tonight. Unless Castiel counts his own survival, he guesses. He’s still undecided on that score.

Dean sits on the edge of the bed and toes off his shoes. He doesn’t set them neatly in the corner along with his other things, the way he normally would. A measure of his tiredness, or his distraction; Castiel doesn’t have the means to tell which.

Normally, he’d sit on the other bed, opposite Dean, and they would talk across the safety of the gap in between. There is only one bed in this room, and so he hovers before the door until Dean eyes him irritably and says, “Dude, you can sit, I’m not gonna—”

He breaks off. Castiel sits, and doesn’t ask what Dean is not going to do.

 

 

The mattress dips beneath him. Castiel fidgets around on it, trying to find the appropriate distance at which to sit. He thinks he understands, right now, the discomfort Dean used to feel when he stood too close, stared too hard; his insistence on _personal space_. Dean is so close. Castiel can feel the warmth of him, how the mattress moves when he shifts his weight. They are almost touching, but he feels like he can hardly see Dean at all.

He takes a swig of his beer to distract himself. Runs his thumb around the rim of the bottle to wipe off the condensation, and looks up to find Dean watching him.

Dean swallows and looks away. Discomfort seeps into the silence between them. Castiel casts around for something to say. Something neutral—or at least, something that has nothing to do with dates or the Gas ‘n’ Sip or out-of-control Rit Zien.

“How is Sam?” he asks.

Dean’s frown deepens. He worries at the label on his beer bottle. “Better,” he says, after a long moment. “He’s—yeah. Better.”

He doesn’t sound convinced, but Castiel doesn't press him. He drinks another third of his beer, considers and rejects a few more conversational non-starters, and is saved from having to attempt them when Dean looks at him sideways and says, “When I said I was sorry. I meant—about all of it.” He looks away again, quickly.

Castiel studies his face, but finds no explanation there. “All of what?” he asks.

Dean waves the hand that isn’t holding his beer. “All of _this_ ,” he says. “Not just what’s-her-name—”

“Nora,” Castiel supplies, and gets a dismissive grunt in reply.

“The whole thing,” Dean goes on. “The stupid-ass job, the psycho angel, whatever rat-infested shithole you’re living in right now—” He pauses. “Where the hell _are_ you living, anyway?”

It would be appropriate to lie at this juncture, Castiel thinks. It would be the kind thing to do. He dredges his mind for something to say, but comes up with nothing, and by the time he opens his mouth to say that it doesn’t matter, there is a stricken look in Dean’s eyes.

“Seriously?” Dean says. “You don’t have anywhere?”

Castiel looks down. “I’ve been staying at the Gas ‘n’ Sip.”

“Jesus.” Dean is staring at him now, a crease between his eyebrows, like the whole thing surprises him.

That, too, is hard for Castiel to understand. Dean told him to leave the bunker, knowing that he had nowhere else to go. What did he expect?

Castiel resists the urge to reassure, to say that it is okay, that he has shelter and food and that is all he needs. It would be a lie, and he doubts he has the energy to make it convincing.

“Man, we gotta find you a place,” Dean says, then. “I’ll show you how to use the internet, or whatever. You can’t just crash at work. Gonna get yourself fired.” He tears a strip off the label of his beer bottle, frowning. He sounds as though he is angry at Castiel for not knowing this, though experience tells Castiel that Dean’s anger is usually at himself, bursting out at those around him because it has no place else to go.

“I would appreciate that,” Castiel tells him. That, at least, isn’t a lie. The process of acquiring even simple things as a human is complicated. There are forms to be filled out, references to be provided, financial information to be given—things Castiel doesn’t have, and doesn’t yet know how to fake.

Dean grunts. “Least I can do,” he says, bitterness in his voice. He seems to gather himself, then; looks Castiel in the eyes and says, “You should, uh. You should stay here tonight.”

“You only have one bed,” Castiel points out. It appears big enough to hold both of them, but he’s aware that there are complexities to human sleeping arrangements. He doesn’t think he should presume.

“I’ll take the chair,” Dean says. “Can’t be worse than that crappy mattress anyhow.”

Castiel frowns and bounces up and down a little on the bed, testing it. “It seems adequate to me.”

“Guess I’ve gotten spoiled,” Dean says, and then abruptly goes quiet, apparently realizing too late that he has said the wrong thing. He looks guiltily away.

A small, selfish part of Castiel is glad that he does.

Dean’s purpose in sending him away from the bunker is still opaque. It’s true that angels might seek revenge on him, if they learned where he was, and that his presence might bring the bunker to their attention. But Kevin Tran is there right now, with Sam. Both angels and demons might seek to gain a prophet for their own ends. Is Castiel’s own presence really so burdensome as not to be worth the risk?

Part of him is not sure he wants an answer. Still, in the absence of an explanation, he’ll take regret.

Dean finishes his beer, gets to his feet and announces, “I’m beat. Gonna turn in.” He yawns theatrically and sheds his jacket. Castiel is sure he’s simply seeking an end to the awkward conversation, but nonetheless, he feels tiredness tugging at his limbs. The pain in his injured wrist throbs with each beat of his pulse as the adrenaline of the evening and the painkillers he took from Nora’s bathroom cabinet wear off. He feels heavy, and he can already tell that he will ache tomorrow.

“Me too,” he says, and bends to unlace his shoes.

When he looks up, Dean has arranged himself in the chair, jacket pulled up over him for a blanket, eyes closed. He looks far from relaxed.

Castiel frowns as he undresses, arranging his shoes in the corner of the room alongside Dean’s boots and folding his clothes carefully. He lays them in a little pile on top of Dean’s duffel, and makes to climb into the bed.

Dean is very still, very quiet. His breathing is not even enough for sleep—and in any case, Dean is rarely still when he sleeps. He tosses and turns; mumbles to himself; makes noises of fear or protest or—very occasionally—pleasure. There was a time when Castiel could soothe his unquiet dreams; place a hand on his forehead and pour light and peace into him until the darkness clawing at his soul subsided and grew quiet.

Castiel hesitates a moment, then reaches for a pillow. There are two on each side of the bed, which seems wasteful in a room intended for one occupant. He holds it out to Dean.

“You should take this,” he says.

Dean opens his eyes. He averts them right away when he catches sight of Castiel, and takes the pillow awkwardly. “Uh. Thanks,” he says, and keeps not looking.

Castiel blinks and looks down at himself. His eyes go to the bandage around his wrist, and then to the cut on his palm, cleaned up and covered with a Band-Aid, also stolen from Nora’s medicine cabinet. But Dean treated Castiel’s injuries himself; and in any case, they’re minor compared to those that Dean and Sam routinely sustain over the course of a hunt. That can’t be why Dean doesn’t want to look at him.

Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s shirtless? Plenty of humans are uncomfortable with exposed skin, though Dean is modest by nobody’s standards, and accustomed to sharing motel rooms with Sam. That can’t be it, either.

Perhaps he’s just done with looking Castiel in the face for today.

The thought sinks inside Castiel like a stone, and he sighs heavily and turns away, putting the light out before he crawls under the bedcovers. He closes his eyes.

Despite his tiredness, sleep doesn’t come. The evening’s events rattle around inside his skull. His mind keeps returning to the pain that Ephraim sensed from him, that seems to be an inextricable part of the human condition. He could raise no logical argument against it—living is more painful than not-living; that much seems undeniable—only, _I want to live anyway_. It seems impossible to disentangle the joy in life from the pain.

Like this, now. Dean’s presence should bring him happiness. It does, in some measure. That Dean still cares enough to come see him, that Dean wanted his help—and then his company, when he proved useless in the field—are things he holds close inside of him. They warm him against the disappointment of Nora’s rejection and the fear of Ephraim’s attack.

In the morning, Dean will leave, and he will not take Castiel with him. It is inevitable, and it makes the good things ache in his chest, and yet Castiel holds onto them anyway.

He sighs and opens his eyes, and finds Dean looking at him in the dark. The light of the motel sign creeps in between the drapes, catches the shine of his eyes.

Dean stiffens when he realizes Castiel is looking at him, and Castiel thinks he is about to turn away again.

“Dean,” he says, to stop it. “What’s wrong?”

It is probably the wrong thing to ask. Dean is never less likely to answer a question than when it is asked directly.

But Dean sits up in the chair, closes his eyes, and then opens them again. “I just—it sucks, man,” he says.

There’s a moment of silence, and Castiel wonders whether he is supposed to ask _what_ sucks.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says, again, then. “That you’re stuck here.”

Apologies from Dean are rare things, for all the guilt he carries around with him. Castiel wonders, sometimes, if he fears them like bursting a damn, is afraid that acknowledging one of his sins—however small—will bring the whole weight of them flooding down on him.

Castiel remembers how that fear felt. How it seemed easier, once, to run from his own wrongs than to put the pieces of his mind back together and see them clearly.

Knowing how rarely Dean apologizes makes the whole thing more difficult to understand, not less. Castiel rolls onto his back, looks up at the ceiling instead of at Dean. He doesn’t really expect an answer, but he ventures a question anyway:

“You say you’re unhappy that I’m here. So why did you tell me to leave the bunker?”

Dean doesn’t answer. He just sighs, and when Castiel turns to look at him again, his eyes are closed, his jaw tight.

Despite everything, something soft uncurls itself in Castiel’s chest. Dean has caused him pain, but he finds he has no wish to cause it in return.

“You look uncomfortable,” he says, hoping that a change of subject will lessen the tension. Dean’s eyes fly open, startled. “This is a double bed. You should sleep here too.”

Dean lets out a breath that might be exasperation or relief at the change of subject. “I’m fine here,” he says.

“Dean.” Castiel puts a note of sternness into his voice, something he’s had no cause to do since the fall. He doesn’t know if it will work, now that he no longer has his old power. Authority feels strange to him, lately.

“Cas.” It’s a reply, at least. Castiel decides to count that as a success.

“You will complain at great length tomorrow if you sleep in that chair,” he tells Dean. “I would prefer that you didn’t.”

That, at least, gets a laugh from Dean. “Fine,” he says, after a moment. “Have it your way.” Dean gets out of the chair and picks his way around the bed, flopping down heavily on the far side of the mattress. Then he sits up and fixes Castiel with a look, pointing a finger at him for good measure. “But I’m warning you,” he says, “if you’re a sleep-cuddler, I will kick you in the nuts.”

Castiel frowns. “How would I know if I was?” he asks. The night he spent in April’s apartment was the only occasion he’s had to sleep in close proximity to another person, and he’s avoided thinking about that in too much detail since.

Dean shrugs. “Just don’t spoon me and we’ll be fine,” he says, and rolls over to face the door.

Castiel watches the back of his head, but no explanation is forthcoming.

It isn’t that he’s never thought about touching Dean. It only seems like a natural extension of the bond they already share, the way they gravitate toward one another. If he thought that Dean would react favorably, he would reach out and trace the lines of Dean’s shoulder blades and the muscles of his arms with his palms, press his mouth to the soft skin at the back of Dean’s neck.

With his old eyes, he could see the way Dean’s soul strained toward him, even as his mind and body kept their distance. Sometimes, he wondered if that meant that Dean wanted the same things.

He also saw how hard Dean fought to clamp down on it, how tightly he held himself in when they got close. Castiel never found the words to break through those barriers then; he certainly wouldn’t know where to start now.

He sighs and turns over. Sleep doesn’t come at once, and Castiel lies on his side, watching the lights of passing cars make patterns on the opposite wall.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice is soft in the silence. Castiel lifts his head, turns toward it.

“Yes?”

There’s a long pause, and then a sigh, the sound of Dean’s head dropping back onto the pillow. “Nothing. Forget it.”

Dean says nothing further. Castiel lies still, listens to Dean’s breathing as it slows, and eventually they fall asleep back-to-back, like quotation marks around separate speeches.

 

 

\----

 

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”

Castiel blinks his way to wakefulness and the sharp smell of motel coffee. He must have turned over in the night; he’s lying with his face to the indent Dean has left in the mattress.

“Hope you take sugar,” Dean tells him, with the false cheeriness he so often employs to stave off unwanted conversations, and waves a Styrofoam cup in front of Castiel’s face. Whatever defenses he let down last night, however briefly, they are back up now.

“Yes,” Castiel says. “Thank you.” He levers himself into a sitting position, the blankets falling down to bunch around his hips, and takes the coffee. He sips at it cautiously. It’s far from pleasant—both too bitter and too sweet, if that’s possible, and hot enough to burn his lower lip—but the first jolt of caffeine through his system nudges him toward alertness, helps stave off his incipient early-morning headache. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, and stands up.

Dean nods and turns for the door. “No prob,” he says. “Now put some pants on, Iggy Pop.” He pauses, then; hovers before the door for a moment before turning and dropping his keys on the table. “And, uh, if you’ve got anything you wanna leave here while you’re at work, go ahead. Room’s paid up for the week.”

Castiel stares after him, but before he can muster a _thank you_ , Dean is out the door.

 

 

\----

 

Castiel slept better last night than he has done since he became human, despite the thoughts swirling inside of his skull. His shoulders don’t ache the way they do after a night on the storeroom floor. Still, at work he finds himself distracted, staring out of the window for long minutes after the Impala has pulled out of the parking lot and vanished down the road.

He goes through the motions. Flashes his usual smile when the polite customers wish him a nice day; lets the petty rudeness of others wash over him. Nora takes his arm as he is about to leave for his break, and offers another, apparently genuine, expression of gratitude for last night, her eyes big and shining.

Castiel smiles and reassures her and extricates himself. He understands that she means well, but the date fiasco has shown him that that is all he understands. When his mind flashes back to it, he is discomfited, reminded of how much he still has to learn before he fits in.

He volunteers to stay an extra hour at the end of his shift, although it is Nora’s turn to lock up. It’s become a habit, since he’s done this so many times in order to sleep in the storeroom unobserved. Now, he has a bed of his own, albeit a temporary one, but the thought of returning to the motel room alone holds little appeal.

He pulls his cell phone from his pocket, and thinks about calling Dean. Then he puts it away again.

 

 

\----

 

It’s late when the car pulls up outside. It screeches to a halt in the parking lot with smoke coming from under the hood, and a scowling woman climbs out of the driving seat and aims a kick at one of the front tires. She glares at the car a moment longer, and then droops, rubbing tiredly at her eyes.

Castiel watches her a moment longer, then goes over to the coffee machine and puts a dollar from his own pocket into the slot.

A moment later, he lets himself out the front door, balancing the cup carefully so as not to slop coffee over the top, and approaches the miserable woman.

She doesn’t look up. “Look,” she says, once he’s in hearing range, “I know I’m not supposed to park here, or whatever, but I don’t know what’s wrong with the damn thing. I’m just gonna have to wait here for a mechanic, okay?” She crosses her arms and finally meets his eyes, staring at him defiantly.

Castiel frowns, taken aback. “That isn’t a problem,” he assures her, and holds out the coffee cup.

She eyes it suspiciously.

“On the house,” he prompts. He’s fairly sure that’s the standard phrase for situations like this, and it surprises him when she laughs.

“Thanks, barkeep,” she says, but then she reaches over and accepts the coffee cup. She pries the lid off and sniffs at it before taking a sip.

“I’m told it’s very bad coffee,” Castiel says, apologetically. “My friend called it ‘Satan’s piss’.”

The woman grins. “Your friend was probably right,” she says, “but that’s not what I was worried about.”

Castiel regards her in confusion, and she holds up a hand.

“Look, no offense. I’m sure you’re a real nice guy. But when you’re a woman driving alone this time of night, you don’t take just anything a strange man gives you.”

“Oh!” Castiel’s confusion clears. “No, I—I don’t mean to hurt you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Like you could,” she says, and takes a gulp of coffee.

This time, the sleeve of her jacket rides up a little, revealing the edge of a tattoo on her forearm. The design looks vaguely familiar, and Castiel peers at it in the darkness. A sigil?

He has to wait for her to take another drink before he can get another look. Once upon a time, he could simply have touched her hand and read any mystical signs she wore, but now he sees only half of it. Definitely some kind of spellwork, though without the full symbol, he couldn’t say whether or not it’s something he’s familiar with.

Perhaps she is a hunter? Castiel risks a glance at the car. There are no obvious weapons, but a box of books sits on the backseat. Old, heavy books, like the ones in Bobby Singer’s library and the Men of Letters bunker.

He pushes the thought of the bunker away and look back at the woman. At second glance, she looks too well-dressed for a hunter, clean and buttoned-up in a smart skirt suit and high-heeled shoes. Besides which, most of the hunters Castiel has encountered have been on the run from some kind of law enforcement or another. They’re more likely to steal and abandon cars than to wait around for mechanics.

On the other hand, she could be in disguise. Perhaps she’s posing as an FBI agent, or a professor—something of that kind. It seems to be a standard component of the job. As for the car—well, Dean is a hunter, but he would never abandon his Impala.

The woman pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and glances at it, frowns and replaces it. She finishes her coffee and sets the cup down on the roof of her car. Then she begins to pace, pausing once to kick at her car’s tires again.

Her frustration seems greater than a simple mechanical problem would warrant—though Castiel has become aware that humans are not always rational about these things. He hesitates a moment, then ventures, “If you were here about the deaths in town, the case has been solved.”

The woman’s head snaps around, and she looks sharply at him. “What makes you think that’s why I’m here?”

It isn’t a denial. Castiel gives her an encouraging smile. “I saw your tattoo,” he says. He gestures toward the car. “And the books. I’m familiar with hunters.”

“Hunters.” The woman’s eyes go hard, and then she smiles. “Now, why would a sigil and a few old books make you think I was one of _them_?” She leans in, then, grasping Castiel’s wrist with a strength that belies her slight stature. “Maybe you don’t see quite as clearly as you think.” Her eyes bore into him, and he feels the hairs on his arms stand up,

He jerks his hand away, taking a step back. “Then what are you?”

“What?” She puts her head on one side. “Can’t you see?” He voice rises in pitch, takes on a mocking tone. She follows him, step for step, as he inches his way back toward the doors. Reaches out with her right hand, but stops short of taking his arm again.

Castiel doesn’t hear what she says next. It’s Latin, he thinks, but there’s a resonance to her voice that his human ears struggle to grasp.

And then red fire curls from her fingertips, snakes toward him through the air.

Toward him—and _into_ him, right between his eyes. It strikes like lightning, gives him no time to get away. He feels it burn behind his eyes, hears her voice inside his head.

 _See everything_ , she says, and then blackness crawls up around him and he sees nothing.

 

 

 

\----

 

“Steve!”

Castiel wakes to somebody shaking his shoulder. He’s cold, and the surface beneath him is hard.

“Steve,” the voice says again, and this time he places it. Nora.

“What happened?” he says. He opens his eyes, and shuts them again once he realizes how bright the lights of the storefront have gotten while he was out. They didn’t hurt to look at, before, did they?

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Nora says, but the humor in her voice is underpinned by worry. “I went to collect Tanya from my sister’s place after work, and ended up staying for dinner, so I only just realized I forgot my keys. When I came back to pick them up, you were out here on the floor.”

Castiel struggles to sit up. Nora’s hand flutters over his shoulder for a moment, then falls back to her side.

The lot is empty. The woman—the _witch_ —and her car are gone. If a tow truck came to collect it while he was unconscious, there’s no sign of that, either.

“Did you see anybody else?” Castiel asks.

Nora shakes her head. “Was it a robbery? Did somebody hit you?” She reaches out as though to touch Castiel’s face, and he pulls away. Presses his own hand to the back of his head. There’s a lump there, tender and sore beneath his fingertips.

Castiel shakes his head. Then he stops, because it hurts. A painful throb is starting up behind his eyes, and he wants nothing more than to close them and sink back into unconsciousness here in front of the Gas ‘n’ Sip.

“There was a woman here,” he says, fighting to stay alert. “A customer. She—” He breaks off. Nora’s a civilian. He can’t expect her to understand what happened here. “She must have gotten scared and left,” he says.

Nora nods. “I should take you to the ER.”

“No!”

His voice comes out louder than he expects, occasioning a burst of pain at the base of his skull, and Nora’s eyes widen. “Steve—”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—startle you.” Castiel swallows. His throat feels full of grit. “I’ll see a doctor tomorrow, if it’s necessary. But I would appreciate a ride.”

Nora nods and guides him over to her car. He sits in the shotgun seat while she puts out the lights in the store and locks up, wincing when the sound of the shutter going down lances pain in through his temples.

Nora’s car is modern, its engine quiet—nothing like the bassy growl of Dean’s Impala—but Castiel feels the sound of it in his bones as they drive back to the motel. He has kept the key to the room in his pocket all day, and it digs into his thigh.

“You’re living here?” Nora asks, as they pull up in the motel parking lot. Castiel doesn’t have the energy for an explanation, so he just nods.

She schools her face into neutrality, but he sees the glimmer of disbelief and sympathy behind her eyes. It’s clear as day, written in the silver-white of her soul.

Castiel blinks, and it’s gone, leaving him blinking at the afterimage of whatever he thought he saw. He lets himself out of the car and into the motel room, murmuring a _thank you_ that he barely hears himself as he leaves. Perhaps Dean left some painkillers.

 

 

\----

 

By morning, the pain in his head has dulled to a manageable ache. Castiel takes a shower—a luxury—and drinks coffee and goes to work, and nothing untoward happens, except that the world still feels a little brighter and sharper around the edges.

He knows that he should call Dean.

But there seems little point, until he knows what the witch did to him—and perhaps a part of him is afraid of hearing Dean’s voice say, _Sorry, man, no can do. I can’t come_ , instead of, _You can’t stay._

He’s still puzzling over it a week later, as he stacks shelves and idly watches a middle-aged man hover in front of the coffee maker. The man obviously can’t figure out the buttons; in a moment he will come to the counter and ask Castiel for help.

He is learning to read people, if only in the smallest of ways.

The man turns, and Castiel drops the bag of chips he’s holding. They fall to the floor with a soft crunch.

The man’s eyes take the daylight and throw it back at him. They are flat and unreal, like roadside reflectors.

The man is a shapeshifter. And Castiel can see it.


	2. Chapter 2

 

The shapeshifter approaches Castiel. He stares back at the mirrored blank of the man’s eyes, momentarily convinced that the creature will see him see it, turn tail, and run, or else attack him right here in the middle of the store.

“Can’t work the coffeemaker,” the shapeshifter says.

Castiel regards him uncertainly. His own bewildered face blinks back at him from those flat, bright irises.

The shifter frowns, and snaps his fingers before Castiel’s face. “Hey, Ground Control to Major Tom. Is a damn latte too much to ask for?”

Mutely, Castiel shakes his head, and goes to make a cup of coffee.

He spends the morning distracted, peering suspiciously into the faces of the customers who pass through. He forgets to smile, forgets to say, _Have a nice day!_ and when a regular who usually takes a moment to chat with him while she pays for her gas shoots him a concerned look and asks if he’s well, he can only muster a terse, “I’m fine,” in reply.

This new ability must be related to what the strange woman—the witch—did to him. After Metatron took his grace, Castiel couldn’t even recognize his own kind, never mind any other kind of supernatural being. He still isn’t sure what he did to anger her, but he has no doubt the spell was intended to hurt.

And yet this feels like a reprieve; a glimmer of his old being returned to him. Castiel wishes he knew what to do with it.

When he puts cherry soda in the Coca-Cola fountain, Nora touches her hand to his forehead—a gesture whose unexpectedness makes him blink and step back—then says, “Well, at least you don’t have a fever,” and sends him to take a break anyway.

Castiel picks up a copy of the local newspaper on his way out back. He sits on the concrete step behind the Gas ‘n’ Sip, the water bottle Nora pushed into his hand as he left standing discarded at his side. The headline on the front of the newspaper, predictably, concerns Ephraim's killings. Beneath it is a blurry crime scene photograph, taken in front of the school.

The shiny black nose of the Impala pokes into one side of the frame, and despite himself, Castiel catches his breath. He was sitting in it at the time, Dean right beside him. It already feels so far away.

He finds what he’s looking for tucked away on page five, beneath an announcement about somebody’s prize-winning cattle. Another death, two towns over. The victim’s sister was arrested for the murder, captured on a security camera leaving the crime scene. A few hours later, she was found tied up in a barn on the other side of town, and claimed to have been there for two days.

Castiel sighs. He supposes that the shifter being a peaceful creature was too much to hope for. He reaches into his pocket for his cellphone.

Dean and Sam don’t know about the murder, obviously. They would have told him if they were coming to take a look. The case seems to have passed unnoticed by hunters in the wake of Ephraim’s actions, as is so often the case with lesser evils. They go unseen in the shadow of greater ones, like hyenas haunting a pride of lions, remoras clinging to the underbelly of a shark.

Unless Dean has noticed, and has decided not to come, but to pass the job on to another hunter instead. Perhaps he has no wish to return so quickly; to see Castiel again so soon.

The thought twinges oddly in Castiel’s stomach, and he hesitates with his thumb over the Call button for a moment before pressing it, swallowing around a sudden nervousness as the phone rings.

“Hey, Cas.” A little of the nervousness bleeds out of him at the sound of Dean’s voice, the smile he hears in it. “How’s it hanging?”

There’s an echo of footsteps in the background, the sound of a door closing, and Castiel frowns. If Dean is seeking privacy, he doesn’t want Sam to know who he is speaking to. Have they had a fight?

Perhaps it was Sam who didn’t want Castiel at the bunker? He dismisses the thought as quickly as it arises. Sam has been under a great burden, these past few months, but he is never unkind.

Which returns him to the conclusion that Dean was the one who decided he should leave. But Dean is happy to speak to him. Castiel doesn’t just hear it. He feels it, and it warms him like morning sunlight.

“No-one has been hanged,” he tells Dean. “But there does appear to be another case in town.”

“Cut straight to the chase, why don’t you?” Dean grumbles, but the warmth is still there in his voice. Castiel closes his eyes and lets himself feel it. “So, whatcha got?”

“A shapeshifter.”

“Huh.” Dean pauses. “You sound pretty sure about that.”

“I am.”

“You been going after this thing by yourself?” Alarm spikes in Dean’s tone. “Jesus, Cas. If you can’t stay outta the way of trouble like I told you, you at least gotta wait for backup.”

“No,” Castiel reassures him. “I haven’t gone after anybody. I just found a news item.”

“And what, you figured it out just like that?”

Castiel can’t help a huff of annoyance, picturing the disbelief on Dean’s face, though he knows that Dean’s tactlessness is only a symptom of his worry.

“The killer was caught on camera, though she was tied up in a barn on the other side of town at the time of the murder. What would _you_ assume?”

“Okay, man, I was just asking.” He sees Dean hold up a placating hand in his mind’s eye. “You know shifters ain’t the only assholes out there who can make themselves look like somebody else. And you don’t wanna head out before you know what you’re hunting. That’s how you end up lunch.”

Castiel sighs. He can’t blame Dean for his caution. He can’t quite stop resenting the reminder of his own uselessness, either.

Part of him wants to tell Dean what he saw. He may no longer be a warrior, but being able to see the supernatural—that would be a definite advantage. Dean and Sam might have a use for him again.

Something holds him back. He doesn’t know, exactly, what the witch did to him, and Dean would only worry about it, would likely blame himself for leaving Castiel alone.

A small, selfish part of Castiel tells him that that is no reason to keep quiet. But he has no wish to place more burdens on Dean’s shoulders. To become more of a burden himself.

“I won’t,” he makes himself say. “That was why I called. I thought you might want to take a look.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and the smile is back in his voice. “Yeah. I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”

“Thank you,” Castiel says, and means it.

“Hey, Cas?”

“Yes?”

Dean goes quiet for a long moment. Then he sighs, and says, “Nothing. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay,” Castiel says, but Dean has already hung up.

 

 

\----

 

It’s only later that it occurs to him Dean said, _I’ll see you soon_. Not, _We’ll see you soon_. Castiel puzzles over it for a moment, and it resurfaces when Dean pulls up outside the Gas ‘n’ Sip the next morning and gets out of the car alone.

“Is Sam okay?” Castiel ventures to ask.

The smile Dean shoots him is like a shutter coming down. “Still ain’t on his A-game,” he says. “He needs to rest up.”

There’s a dark swirl of worry behind Dean’s eyes, but Castiel can already tell that this is all the answer he’s going to get. He nods, and presses no further.

Dean is dressed in one of the suits he wears when he’s posing as an FBI agent. He’s rumpled from the car ride, his tie a little askew, and it occurs to Castiel that he hasn’t checked into a motel room yet.

Perhaps they will sleep in the same room again tonight. For all that last time was awkward, the thought makes his heart beat a little faster.

He hesitates, then reaches out to fix Dean’s tie. Dean used to do the same for him, once, rolling his eyes in fond exasperation. Dean looks at Castiel’s hand in surprise, and Castiel feels him tense beneath his suit, thinks that he might be about to pull away. He doesn’t. He holds still, lets Castiel straighten his tie and smooth the lapels of his jacket. When Castiel is done, Dean just looks at his hands for a moment, his lips parted in what might be surprise.

Then he grins. “Hey,” he says, “maybe next time you get a date I won’t have to dress you for it,” and Castiel feels disappointment knot up his guts.

“You should go to the sheriff’s office,” he says, and lets his hands drop back to his sides.

 

 

\----

 

Castiel’s head starts to ache again mid-way through his shift. It’s almost lunchtime, and he’s heard no word from Dean, though he guesses that is to be expected. Dean is likely still busy at the sheriff’s office—or if there is only one shapeshifter, it’s possible he has decided to go after it himself, without waiting for Castiel to tag along.

Remembering his fear when Ephraim appeared at Nora’s house, how it felt to face destruction without any of his old power, he supposes he should hope that’s what has happened.

He doesn’t.

A magazine slaps down on the counter, jolting Castiel from his thoughts. There’s a young woman standing in front of him. She adds a pack of gum and a bottle of some bright blue energy drink to her purchases, and gives him a wan smile.

Something is wrong about her. Castiel frowns, studying her for a moment, until she taps a fingernail impatiently on the counter. “I need to get going,” she says. “So if I could just pay for my stuff…” She trails off tiredly, and Castiel realizes what he is seeing.

There is a pallid flicker of sickness behind her eyes. The same unhealthy cast Sam’s soul took on when he began the Trials, before it ever began to show on his face, though this is a hundred times less serious. This woman is simply unwell, her soul already showing its exhaustion, though the physical symptoms haven’t yet had time to manifest.

Castiel reaches across the counter, and takes a packet of tissues and one of lozenges from the stand in front of the till. “You’re going to need these,” he says.

The woman frowns at him, but then her shoulders sag and tiredness wipes the frown from her face. “Dammit,” she says. “I knew I was coming down with something. I really look that bad, huh?”

Castiel isn’t sure of the appropriate answer, but apparently the woman isn’t expecting one; she just sighs and adds the lozenges and tissues to her pile.

She pays up and leaves, and Castiel finds the throb of pain behind his eyes has intensified. He grits his teeth and attempts to smile for the next customer—though, judging by the strange look the man gives him, it comes out as more of a grimace.

He keeps on seeing things.

The stress of the young mother trying to herd her three children back into the car; the guilt of the middle-aged man buying chocolates and glancing at his watch. But he sees other, less obvious, things, too. A woman whose face is a Noh mask of calm seethes with red-raw rage behind her smile. A curmudgeonly old man dances for joy behind his frown. A silent child dreams in light and music.

At first, they’re faint. Not images so much as suggestions; things that take him a few moments to work out, like the woman’s illness. They get clearer as the day goes on. His retinae ache.

When Castiel first saw people with his human eyes, the light of their souls no longer visible to him, it felt like seeing lanterns with their flames extinguished. Like walking the streets of some well-known town at night and finding them defamiliarized by the dark.

He has gotten used to it. It’s not as though he had much choice. He even thinks about it in human metaphors. The lights are back on, and they are blinding him, and by the time he hears the Impala pull up outside the Gas ‘n’ Sip, he’s wincing, leaning against the counter as Nora hands him a bottle of Tylenol from her purse with the injunction to “Keep it—and for God’s sake, Steve, go see the doctor.”

Castiel nods assent, sensing her worry like a black thread drawn tight and wishing only to ease it.

Then the door opens, and Dean walks in, and he freezes where he stands.

He never knew Dean’s soul when it was pure. When he first saw it, it was close to lost: consumed by pain, and become pain’s instrument. Pain—and anger, and fear, and guilt—he has never known Dean without these things.

They are here now. Castiel sees them again, as clearly as he ever did.

He sees light, too; and warmth, and the part of Dean’s soul that reaches out to him, even as Dean stands in the doorway with worry in his eyes. The brightness of it all aches in him, but Castiel cannot tear his eyes away. It’s like seeing the sun after the longest part of the night; after you have begun to believe you’ll never see it again.

 

 

“Hey, C—Steve.” Dean takes a step toward him, then stops. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Castiel tells him. “My shift is over in—” He pauses, glances at the clock.

“Go _home_ , Steve,” Nora cuts in. She wags a finger. “And don’t you dare come in tomorrow if you’re still sick. Seriously. If you’re contagious, I don’t want it!” She gives him a stern look.

Castiel nods, and follows Dean out to the car.

Dean doesn’t start the engine immediately when they get in. He sits in the driver’s seat, turning the keys over in his hands and frowning. The colors of his soul waver uncertainly. “You want me to drive you back to the motel?” he asks. “I can’t take you on a hunt if you’re sick.”

He lifts a hand, and it hovers over Castiel’s shoulder for a moment before dropping back to his side. Castiel sees him want to touch, wonders which of them Dean wants to reassure.

“I’m not sick,” he says. “I just have a headache. Too much caffeine.”

He sees Dean watch him for a moment longer; sees him decide to believe the lie before saying, “Yeah, man, you wanna watch that stuff. Choose your addictions wisely. I mean, at least pick something fun.”

Castiel smiles faintly. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

Dean starts the engine. “Yeah, well. Just stay away from the early-morning runs, that’s all I’m sayin’. You don’t wanna end up like Sammy.”

He goes abruptly quiet, then, his light dimming. Castiel closes his eyes.

 

 

\----

 

Things are easier away from the Gas ‘n’ Sip, with only one other person sharing his space. Not so much sensory input. Castiel keeps his eyes closed for most of the drive, and by the time they pull up outside the shifter’s likely lair—an empty farmhouse just outside the next town over—his headache has eased a little.

Dean’s “Huh,” makes him open his eyes.

“What is it?” he asks, and then sees what Dean is pointing at: a police cruiser parked in front of the gates.

“Stay in the car,” Dean warns him, and slides his gun into the back of his waistband before he gets out.

The police car appears empty. Dean peers in through the window, then tries one of the doors. It’s locked. Castiel can see his apprehension, tightly-coiled; but when a figure rounds the corner of the track to the farmhouse and greets him with a wave of the hand, Dean plasters on his familiar cocky grin.

The police officer looks vaguely familiar, Castiel thinks. It takes him a moment to place the man, but as he comes closer, he realizes it’s the same officer who dealt with Ephraim’s killings.

He must be having a difficult week.

The cop moves closer, then, close enough for Castiel to see his eyes. They’re flat and blank, reflecting the light from the Impala’s headlamps.

Castiel ducks. That the headlamps are still on is in his favor: it’s possible the police officer—or the shifter wearing his likeness—hasn’t noticed there’s anybody in the car. He opens the glovebox and scrabbles around for a weapon.

His fingers close around the butt of another handgun, and he thanks Dean’s paranoia for ensuring he keeps a spare.

Castiel doubts it’s loaded with silver bullets. He just hopes that it’s loaded at all.

Slowly, slowly, he opens the car door, staying low and hoping desperately that Dean’s and the shifter’s voices will cover up any sound he makes getting out. He holds his breath; feels his heartbeat loud in his ears.

He creeps around the side of the Impala, keeping to a crouch.

“Still don’t see why you think there’s anybody else involved, Agent,” the cop is saying. “We caught the sister on camera. Open and shut case.”

“No such thing, in my experience,” Dean says, with the particular grin that means he is a few minutes from punching somebody.

Castiel inhales deeply, stands up.

His shoe slips on the dirt.

The cop turns on the spot, frowning. He reaches for his gun, and before Castiel is quite aware of what he’s doing, a reflex slams through him and he has shot the man three times in the chest.

The cop looks down. Touches the front of his jacket and holds his bloody fingers up in front of his face. Takes a step toward Castiel.

Another shot rings out, and the shifter’s body crumples to the floor. Dean stands behind him, eyes wide, breathing hard.

“What the hell, Cas?” he says. “If that hadn’t been the shifter—”

“Well, it was,” Castiel tells him. “We should find the man he was impersonating. He’s probably up in the farmhouse.” He sighs. “I hope he’s still alive.”

Dean fixes him with a look. “We’re gonna talk about this later,” he says, and Castiel sees the anxiety flicker behind his eyes. The guilt, too.

His headache starts up again.

“Fine,” he says, but Dean has already turned away. Castiel follows him down the track.

 

 

\----

 

“So, you gonna tell me what that was about?”

Castiel sighs and rubs his temples. He is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Dean as he stands in the middle of the room. Dean isn’t pacing, but he might as well be; Castiel can read the tension in the lines of his body, see the worry eating at his soul, a shadow that spreads like ink in water.

“Dean,” he says, quietly. “Sit down.”

Dean takes a step toward the chair. Stops. Castiel sees his hesitation. Then Dean turns, and comes to sit beside Castiel on the bed.

He has no excuse, this time. No beer bottle to pass, no bandages to check. Castiel’s breath catches in his throat, and he has to look away from Dean’s face before he can begin to explain.

“I saw his eyes,” he says. “The shapeshifter. That was how I knew.”

Dean looks at him curiously. “His eyes? Like when they get caught on camera?”

Castiel nods. Pauses a moment and then says, “It’s how they used to look to me. Before—”

“Before you got humanized,” Dean finishes for him. His voice is thoughtful, and Castiel turns to look at him again. His expression has softened, the small creases worn into his face by worry fading a little. “You think maybe you’re getting your powers back? Metadouche’s spell was a temporary thing?” His light brightens, just the tiniest fraction, and it takes Castiel a moment to understand what he is seeing.

Hope. Hope for _him_.

He shakes his head. “That isn’t possible,” he says, and Dean’s frown returns, his soul dims.

“Then how’d it happen?”

Castiel closes his eyes. “A witch.”

“A—Cas, what the hell?” The throb at his temples intensifies when Dean raises his voice. Castiel rubs his fingertips over them in circles. He doesn’t want to open his eyes, to see Dean looking at him with accusation, or with pity.

“She came by the gas station the night after you left,” he says, quietly. “She had a sigil tattooed on her arm, some grimoires in her car. I mistook her for a hunter. I assumed she was in town to investigate Ephraim’s killings, and I told her the case was taken care of.”

“Okay,” Dean says, slowly. “So, what? You got talking and she decided to help you out from the goodness of her heart? Because I hate to break it to you, Cas, but that shit doesn’t come without a price.”

“No.” Castiel opens his eyes, frowning as he reruns the strange conversation in his head. It’s a little hazy, probably because he hit his head when he passed out. “She seemed—displeased.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Well, that sounds more like the kinds of witches I’ve met,” he says, keeping his voice light even as his soul darkens with anxiety. “How’d you piss her off?”

Castiel looks down. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Course you don’t,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “You remember any of the details? She say anything when she put the mojo on you?”

“Just one thing,” Castiel tells him. “ _See everything_. Then I blacked out. She was gone by the time I woke up.”

“Great.” Dean sounds exasperated, but Castiel doesn’t reply, finds himself arrested by the shift and play of light in Dean’s soul. There’s worry there, a sickly pale green thing, and guilt—but something else, too; something gentler. Something that strains toward Castiel as though it wants to touch him.

He watches it, fascinated.

He has seen this part of Dean before, though not often. In the moments when they are quiet together, rare reprieves from the constant battle that is their lives. In Lucifer’s crypt. Beside the river in Purgatory. In those last helpless moments before the Leviathan took hold of him.

It’s just that this human life makes all those things seem so far away. He’d almost convinced himself it was never really there. Now he finds himself wanting to touch it—or touch Dean, at least—just to prove to himself that it is real.

“You got any idea where she was going?” Dean is saying. “Where she came from, who she was? Anything?”

Castiel swallows and shakes his head. “We only spoke for a few minutes.”

“So.” Dean pinches the bridge of his nose. “You woke up, and now you can see monsters again? That’s it?” He pauses. “You ever think there might be another shoe here?”

Castiel looks at him in puzzlement, and he shakes his head.

“I mean—a downside. You said she didn’t look happy with you. You noticed anything else weird?”

For a moment, Castiel hesitates. _Yes_ , he wants to say. _Yes. I see you. I see how heavy the world weighs on your shoulders. I don’t want to be another of your burdens. So leave this be. Let me use it to help you as long as I can, and if it goes wrong, let it be my problem. It’s okay._

It would never work. Dean doesn’t deal well with not knowing things.

“It isn’t just monsters,” Castiel tells him. _It’s you, all that hurt and guilt and you still shine so brightly I don’t want to look away, it’s like staring at the sun_. “It’s everything. The world. It’s—sharper. Clearer.”

Dean looks at him curiously. “Like it used to be?”

“Yes.” Castiel looks at his hands. “It’s rather painful.”

Dean doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he groans and says, “Fucking witches, man.” It’s a rote complaint, but Castiel sees his shoulders sag, sees the little worry creases beside his mouth deepen.

Castiel thinks again about touching him. Smoothing away Dean’s frown with his thumbs, telling him that there’s no use in worrying. Castiel would rather be of use to the people he loves, cursed or not. Dean said that to him, once. He found it hard to accept, then; but now, he needs it to be true.

He does none of that, says none of that, just folds his hands before him and nods agreement.

“I’ll call Sam,” Dean says, and gets to his feet, pulling out his cellphone. “Tell him to hit the books.”

He lets himself out the motel room door, and Castiel hears the muffled hum of his voice as he talks to Sam. Castiel closes his eyes and lets himself sink back onto the mattress.

Dean is right, of course. Even the best-intentioned magic never comes without a price. But just for now, Castiel would like to pretend that this is a blessing. That he has a little of his old self back—that Dean might have a reason to need him again.

He is so very tired of being alone.

Dean finishes his phone conversation, and Castiel hears the door open. It closes very quietly, and then Dean says, “Cas?” low and hesitant.

He opens his eyes. Dean looks tired, his soul flickering feebly. It is as though talking to Sam has drained the light out of him.

Castiel frowns and sits up. “Dean,” he says, cautiously. “How is Sam?” It’s a relief, strangely, to worry about somebody other than himself.

Dean looks away for a fraction of a second, then shoots him a brittle smile and says, “Pain in the ass, like always.”

“Dean.” Castiel lets a warning note creep into his voice. He isn’t sure that it will work the way it did when he was an angel, but Dean droops a little, running a hand over his eyes in a gesture of resignation.

“He’s getting better,” he says, and sounds as though he is trying to convince himself. Shadows of doubt mottle his soul. “Still ain’t a hundred percent.”

“You said that last time,” Castiel points out.

“Yeah, well.” Dean looks at him, then away again. “No change.” He moves to sit beside Castiel on the bed again, eyes front.

“If something’s wrong—” Castiel breaks off. Reaches out to touch Dean’s arm, then thinks better of it and lets his hand drop back to his side. “I may no longer be of use to you as a hunter, but I am willing to listen.”

Dean looks up, gives him a sad little smile that makes the corners of his eyes crease up.

“Trust me, Cas,” he says. “Talking about it ain’t gonna help.”

“If you wish to be quiet,” Castiel says, “I can still listen.”

Dean sighs. But Castiel sees that tenderness in him again, the way that longing washes over the surface of his soul like a wave breaking on shore, recedes again and leaves behind sorrow. Some soft, human part of him wonders what would happen if he did touch Dean right now. If he took Dean’s hand; pressed his lips to the creases at the corners of Dean’s eyes. Would Dean push him away and leave—this time never to return—or would he let himself accept what little comfort Castiel can still offer?

Castiel is not sure he has the courage to find out.

“Tell you what,” Dean says, then, sitting up. He raises his voice a notch, a note of false cheerfulness in it that Castiel recognizes as a signal that the time for honesty is over. “You don’t bug me to talk about Sam, I won’t bug you to talk about your freaky-ass second sight. Not until Sammy finds something out about it, anyway. Deal?”

Castiel hesitates a moment longer. There is something like a plea in Dean’s eyes.

“Deal,” he says. He gets to his feet. “Would you like a beer? There are still some left from the last time you were here.”

“Seriously? Don’t tell me you’re gonna turn into another health nut,” Dean grumbles. Castiel rolls his eyes and hands him a bottle. Dean smiles, then—a tiny, genuine smile, perhaps the only real one he has given all day. “Thanks, Cas.”

Castiel smiles back at him, and takes a drink.

 

 

\----

 

Dean leaves early the next morning, after another night spent curled awkwardly away from one another on the motel bed.

Castiel slept very little.

Before he was human, he struggled to comprehend Dean’s insistence on personal space. He understands it a little better, now.

It is a pleasure and an ache both at once, having Dean close enough to touch, his face soft in sleep, the expressions that pass over it an open book. How many times Castiel wanted to reach out to him. To say, _Tell me what’s wrong_ , and, _Take me with you_ , to cup that fragile light in his hands and keep it safe.

He can’t do that. His touch no longer heals; would cause only trouble, for both of them. So instead he closed his eyes and held very still, his breath catching in his throat when Dean turned over in his sleep and unconsciously brushed a hand against his side. He woke with the dawn, and climbed out of bed as soon as the sky was light, padding around the motel room on bare feet as he made coffee and dressed for work.

The idea seemed less depressing than that of closing his eyes again and opening them to an empty bed.

“Sure you don’t want a ride to work?” Dean asks him now, car keys jingling in his hand as he stands at the door.

Castiel nods. It isn’t simply that he prefers to walk—though, that is part of it. He finds it preferable to riding in cars, despite its slowness. It’s active; he feels as though he is getting somewhere. More than that, though, he fears that if he arrives at the Gas ‘n’ Sip with Dean again, Nora will begin to ask him questions. He saw her well-intentioned curiosity when he left with Dean yesterday, and he suspects that she thinks they are romantically involved. He does not want to have to tell her she is wrong.

“Suit yourself,” Dean says, with a shrug. He hesitates, then places a hand on Castiel’s shoulder. “Keep in touch, okay? I’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

Castiel would like to take his hand and squeeze it. A gesture of reassurance—though whether for Dean or for himself, he isn’t sure.

He doesn’t. He nods gravely, and says, “Take care of yourself, Dean,” and stands barefoot in the doorway of his motel room until the Impala disappears down the road.


	3. Chapter 3

 

He’s becoming accustomed to the headaches.

The world grows sharper and brighter every day. Castiel sees into people without trying now. The trouble that roils beneath their smiles, the excitement that fizzes behind calm facades, every face a miniature portrait of joy and disaster.

When he was an angel, he was able to control it—or to view it from a greater distance, at least. He could see human emotion, but didn’t understand it; was surprised, at first, when Dean and Sam (though mostly Dean) objected to being read at a glance. Privacy is an alien concept to angels, but Castiel came to respect it, in fits and starts of understanding. The friendship of humans—of _these_ humans, at least—was worth navigating the rocky waters of social interaction. It was worth learning how to earn trust.

He failed often; but he thinks he understands it more clearly now.

He understands it well enough that he avoids looking his customers in the eyes.

Nora is worried about him. It shows. She makes her voice gentle when she asks him to perform tasks; keeps him off the cash register where possible; sends him on his breaks with a pat on the shoulder and an injunction to _take as long as you need_. She hasn’t asked him to babysit again. Castiel has considered inventing an ordinary, human ailment, simply for the sake of talking to her—to somebody—but he senses that it would be a poor substitute for telling the truth. For telling it to somebody who could believe it.

Dean calls, most days, to check in on him, but Castiel finds himself holding back when Dean asks how he is feeling. Partly, it’s just that wallowing in his own misery would help nothing. But more than that, the brief phone calls, the nights he spends making sure his cell phone is never out of his sight for fear of missing a message, remind him of the distance between them. Dean is in Kansas, and he will not take Castiel home with him, and he will not say why.

That fact keeps Castiel cautious. He measures his words, lest he reveal himself a greater liability than Dean already knows him to be.

He does not think Dean would abandon him. Not completely. He would probably just take a single step back. They move around each other in ever-increasing circles.

He knows Dean does not want to do this. It’s possible he would know it even without his new sight. But knowing that gives him no answers, so he stays cautious, marshalling his sentences, their conversations ending after a few moments with strained _goodnight_ s.

 

 

\----

 

Castiel is walking back to the motel room, having refused a ride from Nora, when he sees the vampire.

Being out in public is easier when he is not expected to speak to anybody, when he can keep his head down and keep moving. He was hoping that the walk would help clear his head, ease the ache behind his eyes—and perhaps he was also hoping to avoid another pitying look from Nora. Between his wages and the handful of credit cards Dean left on his last visit, with an injunction not to use them all at once, he’s managed to keep paying for the motel room. It’s perfectly adequate for his needs, but Nora seems to think there is something sad about it.

Castiel has begun to learn the layout of the town, and he takes a shortcut back to the motel, weaving through the kinds of backstreets in which he is more accustomed to finding bodies than taking walks. He understands the need for extra caution, now that he is human, and he thinks Dean would probably scold him for doing so. But he’s carrying nothing worth stealing, and he has learned that he can still appear intimidating if he draws himself up to his full height—more impressive when he isn’t flanked by Sam and Dean—and stares hard at anybody who approaches him.

Besides which, his head _hurts_ , and he wants nothing more than to return to his room, draw the curtains, and close his eyes.

He’s thinking of little else as he hurries back, and he startles when a movement in the alley before him catches his eye.

His first thought is that the man is homeless. He’s a skinny figure, his jeans torn, the hood of his oversized sweatshirt pulled down low over a pale face and a curtain of greasy hair. He looks young, but little different from the unfortunate, worn-out men Castiel encountered in the hostels and encampments he slept in after the fall. Something in him softens at the memory, reminds him that there are still people in this world whose problems are greater than his.

Then the man looks directly at him, and Castiel sees his eyes.

They’re blood-red, their pupils shrunk to microdots. And his soul is—not right.

There is a blight on it. A shadowy flicker, like fire in reverse, dark and unnatural. Consuming.

A hunger for blood.

Castiel got to know the sight well in Purgatory, over the weeks he and Dean spent travelling with a vampire, hunting for a possibly-mythical portal. Benny had to fight it constantly, one half of his soul locked in permanent battle against the other. There were moments when the blight seemed to be winning, and then he would excuse himself on some muttered pretext—scouting ahead or hunting for firewood—and return only when he had gotten it back under control.

There is no battle in this creature’s soul. Only the hunger. The desperation. The willingness to kill.

The vampire moves toward Castiel, a parody of a smile on his face. “Hey there, mister,” he says, his voice a pleading whine. “Don’t suppose you could spare a buck for a cup of coffee?”

Despite himself, Castiel takes a step back. The vampire is young, underfed, unsteady on his feet. He must be newly-turned, and is probably starving; all things that might be to Castiel’s advantage if he has to fight. Still, some primal human instinct kicks in inside his head, makes his heart beat faster, tells him to _run, run, run._

“Aw, c’mon,” the vampire says, one corner of his mouth curling up into a smirk. “I ain’t here to steal from you.”

The shadowy fire roars in his eyes, and it is only that which gives Castiel the presence of mind to dodge as the vampire springs at him.

The vampire hits the wall behind him and stumbles, clutching his head. Castiel backs away, casts around desperately for something to use as a weapon.

The nearest object is a bag of garbage. He grabs for it, finds it too light to be of any use, and flings it at the vampire anyway. It bursts apart on impact, and covers the vampire in potato peelings. One of them slides down his face, leaving a slimy trail behind. For a moment, Castiel stares at him, struck by the absurdity of the picture.

Then the vampire’s eyes narrow, a red surge of anger coloring his bloodlust.

Castiel freezes, the instinct to run and the instinct not to turn his back at war within him. The vampire makes another lunge at him, and this time Castiel’s steps falter as he backs away and he lands heavily on his ass, narrowly missing hitting his head on the wall behind him. He scrabbles around desperately on the ground. His fingers close around something. A length of wood.

A reprieve, he thinks—but when he lifts it, he finds it stumpy and rotten, likely no more use than hitting the vampire with his fist.

He tosses it aside. Uses the wall to lever himself to his feet, and swings a fist at the oncoming vampire.

It connects. The creature actually stumbles backward, and Castel leans in to charge at it. Maybe he can take the vampire by surprise, knock the breath out of it for long enough to get away.

He takes a deep breath. Lunges hard at the vampire.

He’s still fast. His momentum carries both of them forward, and he slams the vampire into the opposite wall. The back of the vampire’s skull connects with a _crack_ , and the vampire’s eyes roll back in his skull, apparently dazed.

Castiel loosens his grip, breathing hard.

The vampire’s head snaps up, and Castiel sees the rage still burning there. Sees it rise higher, like he has just thrown gasoline on a fire. Realizes his mistake.

Feels teeth in his neck.

The shock of it freezes him on the spot. He finds himself numb of all the things he might have expected to feel at this moment. The fear, the anger, the indignation at having this life stolen from him when it is so new—all absent, crowded out by a single thought.

_I’m sorry, Dean._

It is the only thing in his head. Until the vampire lets go, shoves him away, and runs.

Castiel wobbles on his feet. Stares blankly at the alley wall.

Then he pitches forward onto his knees, hands coming up automatically to keep him from hitting his head on the alley wall. He barely registers the sting as he grazes his palms.

“Hey.” The voice comes from somewhere above him. Castiel blinks and looks up. “Hey, are you okay? What happened?”

One of the doors that opens onto the alleyway is open. That must have been what startled the vampire. A burly man in a cook’s apron stands in the doorway, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear. He’s frowning.

Castiel puts his fingers to his neck. They come away sticky with blood.

The cook stares and steps down from the doorway, moving to crouch in front of Castiel. “Holy shit,” he breathes out, horror flaring up behind his eyes. “Did that guy _bite_ you?”

“I… yes. I think so,” Castiel says, some self-preservation instinct in the back of his brain activating itself and reminding him that humans aren’t supposed to know about these things. Saying, _Actually, he was a vampire, and I need to go call my friends so they can help me decapitate him_ , is not going to help.

The cook shakes his head. “Drugs, man,” he says, and then straightens.

He holds out a hand. Castiel blinks at it.

“C’mon,” the cook tells him. “We got a first aid kit. I mean, you probably need to see a doctor, get some shots, but I can at least clean that up before you get dirt in there.” He gestures at the bite on Castiel’s neck.

Castiel studies the cook for a moment, searches his soul. He finds no danger there.

He takes the proffered hand, and gets to his feet.

 

 

\----

 

“There you go,” the cook says, taping the final edge of the bandage into place. “Best I can do.” He pats Castiel on the shoulder, and stands up.

Castiel touches the dressing with his fingertips, winces and pulls his hand away. The cook cleaned the bite with an antiseptic that stung like bitter cold and taped the edges of his wound together with small strips of Band-Aid, a slow and not entirely painless process. Between this and the headaches, Castiel is beginning to understand why Dean and Sam found his healing abilities so miraculous. So much of human life is taken up by hurting.

“Thank you,” he says, and gets to his feet. He’d almost forgotten about his headache in the aftermath of the vampire attack, but now it returns full force, hammering on the backs of his eyeballs. He squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Hold on,” the cook tells him, and roots around inside the first aid kit again. He comes out with a bottle of pills, which he holds out to Castiel. “Keep ‘em,” he says. “We got plenty.”

Castiel frowns at the bottle. He recognizes the brand name, he thinks. Sam and Dean keep them on hand. ( _Because 1-800-ANGEL doesn’t always pick up_ ; a clap of Dean’s hand on his back and a grin that felt like an accusation.) Painkillers.

“Thank you,” he says. He places one of the pills in the center of his tongue and swallows it dryly. It turns to a bitter paste in the back of his throat.

“You wanna call somebody?” the cook asks him. “There anybody who can give you a ride home?”

“It’s fine,” Castiel says, his hand going automatically to his pocket. He will need to call somebody; but he can hardly tell Dean about his vampire encounter in front of a civilian.

He pauses when he finds the pocket empty. He frowns and checks the other one. His cell phone is gone.

The cook raises an eyebrow. “You need to borrow a phone?”

Castiel sighs. “Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”

Thankfully, the cook hands over his cell phone and disappears into the kitchen, announcing that he needs to check up on _that damn trainee, gonna burn the place down if I turn my back for two minutes_ , instead of hanging around to listen.

Castiel puzzles over the cell phone, taking a moment to figure out the keypad, then dials the only number he has memorized.

The phone rings once, twice, and then picks up.

“Dean,” Castiel says, without waiting for a greeting. “I’ve been attacked by a vampire.”

There’s a pause. Then: “Cas?” Sam’s voice says. “Shit, what happened? Are you okay?”

Castiel pauses, blinking.

“ _Cas_.” Still Sam’s voice. “I said, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Castiel assures him. He pauses, touching the dressing on his neck. “Though unfortunately, the vampire escaped. I wasn’t able to see where he went.”

“You’ve been hunting?” Sam says, concern in his voice. Castiel can picture the unhappy set of his face, eyebrows drawn together in consternation. “Cas—do you really think that’s a good idea? You’re human now. You don’t have any of your powers.”

“I haven’t been hunting,” Castiel says, then stops. “Wait. You said—I don’t have any of my powers?”

“Well, yeah.” Sam sounds puzzled. “You’re human now. It’s gonna take some getting used to.” He sighs. “I have to say, I don’t know why you wouldn’t stay with us. We could’ve helped.”

“You didn’t want me to leave?” Castiel says, surprised enough that he lets himself be sidetracked from the immediate issue. “I thought—” He breaks off, frowning.

He’d assumed the decision was mutual. He heard Sam and Dean talking, just before Dean told him to leave. He knows that Dean is unhappy with the situation—has seen it with his own eyes, felt it to be true in the deepest part of his soul.

Now this. And Sam doesn’t know about his sight.

“Did Dean tell you?” he asks. “About the spell?”

“Spell?” Sam sounds as lost as he feels. “He told me he went to check out a shapeshifter, but that was—” Sam stops. “Wait, wait. Dean asked me to do some research. About witches cursing people with second sight, that kind of thing. Said Rudy had asked if we could check the Men of Letters archive for anything related. Honestly, I thought he was just trying to keep me occupied—he still seems to think I’m gonna drop dead the moment I see a ghost.”

“But you aren’t sick,” Castiel says, slowly. He feels as though all these pieces of information should fit together somehow—as though he should be able to complete the puzzle and see the whole picture. But it makes no sense to him. Something is still missing.

“I feel fine,” Sam says, dismissively. “That’s just Dean being Dean. You know how he is. But the spell he asked me to research… that was for you, wasn’t it?”

In this moment, Castiel is no longer sure that he does know how Dean is. Suddenly, he wishes desperately that Dean were here, standing in front of him; that he could see Dean’s soul, read its intentions and know them good.

He does know them. But without the evidence before his eyes, he finds the knowledge hard to hold on to.

He sighs. “Yes,” he says. “A little while after Dean left—after we dealt with the Rit Zien. I had an encounter with a witch.”

“Wow. Angels, shapeshifters, vampires, witches—you think Rexford’s on some kind of a supernatural hotspot?”

Castiel inclines his head. “It’s possible,” he says. It might explain why this was the place he chose to stop; why it simply felt right to him, despite being no different to any of the dozens of other towns he has visited with Dean and Sam. “Though I don’t think the witch was local. I thought she was a hunter who had come to investigate after hearing about the people Ephraim killed.” Even if she wasn’t a hunter, he supposes it’s possible she came to investigate for reasons of her own. “Ephraim came here looking for me. And a shapeshifter and a single vampire in the same town a few days apart isn’t so unlikely. I think perhaps it just… seems that way because I can see them.”

 _Because I can see them, and they can harm me_ , he doesn’t say.

When he was an angel—strange, still, to think of it in the past tense—the more mundane manifestations of the supernatural merited no more than a moment of his attention. The vampires, the werewolves, the shapeshifters, the spirits, the cases Dean and Sam investigate when the world is in no immediate danger—they mostly flew beneath his radar. He could have destroyed them with a touch, and so he felt their presence no more urgently than that of a fly buzzing around his head.

Now—down on the ground, among the humans—they loom so much larger in his field of vision. He struggles to see the bigger picture.

“I guess so,” Sam says, and Castiel pushes the thought away. Sam doesn’t need to hear his woes. “I still think I should get somebody to check it out. I’ll give Rudy a call.”

“Should I assist him?” Castiel wonders.

“No,” Sam says. “You know what— Where are you right now?”

Castiel blinks, puzzled. “In the back of a diner. The cook let me borrow his cell phone. I lost mine.”

Sam laughs. “I mean, are you in the nice part of town, or the crappy part?”

Castiel pauses. Considers the trash-strewn alley out back, the way the cook reacted to his altercation with the vampire without surprise until he saw the bite, as though fights are an everyday occurrence around here. The motel he sleeps in, with its broken neon sign and stained carpets. “I… believe this would be considered the crappy part.”

“Okay, good.” Sam pauses. “I hope that cook didn’t get your name, because you’re gonna need to hang onto his cell phone. I’m guessing you don’t have enough money to get a bus to us, so I’m gonna tell you how to hotwire a car.”

Castiel digs in his pocket and leaves the meager contents of his wallet on the table by way of apology before he slips out the door.

Under Sam’s direction, he finds his way to an ill-lit parking lot and settles on an older model of car—apparently less likely to be alarmed.

The lot is deserted, and Castiel finds himself jumping at shadows, the memory of the vampire attack still fresh in his mind. He struggles to follow Sam’s instructions and juggle the cook’s cell phone. Once, he drops it and it goes skittering across the concrete, leaving a crack down the middle of the screen.

Despite all of it—his fear; his guilt at stealing from one of the few humans to have shown him compassion; the fact that neither he nor Sam know why Dean is lying to them—Castiel feels a thrum of excitement somewhere deep in his chest. Sam has invited him back to the bunker—back into his life, and therefore back into Dean’s.

He is being allowed back home.

 

 

\----

 

Castiel drives through the night, stopping only to use the restrooms at gas stations and roadside diners that blur into a single strip-lit whole. Once, he scrapes together enough loose change from the glove compartment of his stolen car for a cup of coffee.

The last of the credit cards Dean gave him buys him a tank of gas in Wyoming. He doesn’t think about food until he is back on the road and his stomach begins to growl, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten since shortly after midday.

He ignores his hunger and drives on.

Shortly after dawn, he stops outside a diner with wireless internet and uses it to find the number for the Gas 'n' Sip where he works. (Worked? He tries out the past tense in his head and finds that it doesn't yet feel comfortable.) Nobody picks up, so he leaves a message, apologizing for his absence and claiming a family emergency. It feels close enough to the truth.

He intends to resume his journey as soon as he hangs up, but he finds his eyelids drooping as he watches the sky lighten, the road ahead an undifferentiated gray ribbon unspooling across the fields. The sight of it makes him tired.

Unbidden, the voices of his friends float to the surface of his mind. Dean’s, _Only a couple more hours, we can make it_ ; Sam’s answer of _Yeah, and we’re gonna be so much use to everybody if we wind up in a ditch_. A well-worn argument, overheard a dozen times from the backseat of the Impala, and many more from a distance.

Sometimes, when Heaven had claimed his attention for too long, Castiel opened his mind and listened for his human friends, concentrating hard to pick out their voices amid the chatter of the world. He had learned early not to listen in on private thoughts, but these idle conversations grounded him; made him feel less alone. Reminded him that there were other creatures caught between the will of Heaven and the life of earth.

It became easy, after a while, to let that listening become spying. To insert himself into conversations that were more than idle; to listen to what his friends were saying and use it to deceive them. He has been careful of it, since.

Part of him thinks that he understands, now, what made knowledge the first sin. What makes gods the greatest sinners of us all.

He rests his head against the car window and closes his eyes.

A tap on the glass jolts him awake, an indefinite time later. He blinks, blinks again, and starts upright when the blurry figure outside his window resolves itself into a traffic cop.

Castiel’s heart beats hard in his throat. Maybe the car has been reported stolen by now. He is across state lines—but he should know better than to think himself safe. He should have abandoned it and exchanged it for another along the way, or just kept driving until he reached the bunker and safety…

The cop taps at the window again, frowning now. Castiel breathes in deeply and winds it down.

He tries to remember how Dean deals with these situations. With a wink and a flirtatious grin; or an expression of wide-eyed innocence that has Sam stifling laughter; or, in dire straits, a smart-mouthed remark and a punch.

All Castiel can muster is a look of bewilderment and a sleep-rough “Yes?” His hand twitches on the steering wheel.

“You can’t sleep here, buddy,” the cop informs him. “C’mon. Move it along.”

Castiel stares blankly for a moment, before the cop’s words register and relief allows him to move again. He nods and puts the car into gear, putting his foot down hard as soon as he reaches the open road.

 

 

\----

 

It’s late morning when he makes it to the bunker. His stolen cell phone has rung once, Dean’s number cut into slices by the shattered screen. He did not stop to answer it.

He climbs out of the driver’s seat and stretches, wincing as his shoulders pop. His limbs ache from the journey. He hopes that he will have time to lie down and rest.

And to eat. His stomach rumbles, and his own breath tastes foul when he swallows. He rubs at his face, and knocks the bunker door.

It’s so thick he feels sure nobody can have heard on the other side. Still, he holds back from knocking harder, listening for footsteps within the bunker.

The walls are thick, too; he doesn’t hear them. Just a click, and then the door opening a fraction of an inch and Dean’s voice on the other side.

“You better tell me who you are and what you want before I—” Dean breaks off. When he speaks again, his voice comes softer, dismayed. “Cas?”

Castiel blinks at the crack in the door. “Yes,” he says.

There’s another series of clicks, and the door swings open. Dean stands in the doorway, the hand holding his gun dangling forgotten at his side. Even if Castiel could not see his soul, he would see Dean’s horror.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dean demands. He takes a step toward Castiel, holds out his free hand and then aborts the gesture, letting it drop back to his side. “Cas, man, you gotta go. _Now_.”

“Dean—”

Dean raises a hand to quiet him, then runs it over his own face, like he is trying to scrub away a headache. “Look, I’ll explain later. I know, I know I should’ve explained to you before, but right now, you gotta go. Before Sam sees you.”

Castiel blinks at him. “You haven’t spoken to Sam?” he says. “He didn’t tell you he called me here?”

Dean’s eyes widen—and then footsteps sound on the stairs behind him, in the bunker.

“No,” Sam’s voice says. “I thought I’d let Dean explain to both of us what’s going on here.”

The footsteps reach the entrance, and Sam’s face looms up behind Dean.

Castiel gasps, and takes a step back.

It’s Sam. And it isn’t.

It’s as though parts of Sam have been rubbed out with a pencil eraser; fragments of another face drawn in over them. A face Castiel recognizes.

The chimera before him is Sam and not-Sam, blood and light, flesh and grace, man and angel.

An angel he has not spoken to in eons.

He takes in a breath to steady himself and steps forward again, looking beyond the bewildered expression on Sam’s face, reaching out with his mind to what lies beneath. It’s an old instinct, one that has little use here, but his mind forms the name before it comes out of his mouth.

_Gadreel?_

Sam’s eyes roll back in his head, lit up from the inside. He stiffens. His head throws itself back—and then he vomits light, a cold, bright torrent of grace rushing out of him and over Castiel’s head, up into the clouds and away.

Sam's head sags forward, and he falls unconscious to the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

 

Dean follows half a second behind, on his knees beside Sam’s unconscious form as soon as he hits the floor. He shakes Sam’s shoulder.

“Sam,” he says. “Sammy! C’mon, man, you gotta wake up. Come back to me.” His voice cracks. There is no response.

Castiel risks a step into the bunker, crouching over the brothers. “Dean,” he says. “What is this? What’s going on here?” He has to fight to keep his gaze steady when Dean looks up at him, not sure what he will see in Dean’s eyes.

They are wide and anguished. But there is no accusation in them, nor in Dean’s soul. Only guilt.

“I didn’t—” Dean blinks once, twice, then turns back to the unconscious Sam. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” He shakes Sam again, just once. Sam flops like a ragdoll. “Sammy. Wake up.”

His voice is a plea. Castiel reaches out, trying to calm the dread that roils in the pit of his stomach, and places a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean doesn’t even seem to register his touch.

More footsteps, from inside the bunker, and then a familiar voice sounds down in the war room. “Sam? Dean? Shut the fucking door, guys, it’s—” The voice goes quiet, the footsteps stilling. “Sam?”

Dean doesn’t answer, still kneeling with his eyes fixed on Sam’s face, still gripping Sam’s shoulder uselessly. Castiel straightens up. “Kevin,” he says.

“Castiel.” Kevin eyes him cautiously. (Understandable. Castiel has hardly been consistently sane in his presence.) “What are you doing here?”

“It’s not important.” Castiel touches Dean’s shoulder again, shaking him gently this time. “We need to get Sam inside.”

Dean looks up at him. His eyes remain unfocused for a moment, and Castiel fears he will have to take charge of this situation alone.

Then, Dean rouses himself. “Yeah,” he says. His voice sounds as though he has swallowed ground glass. “You get his legs.”

Between them, they maneuver Sam’s limp form down the stairs and through the bunker, finally depositing him on his bed. He’s heavy, and Castiel rolls the ache out of his shoulders, trying not to wince visibly as his headache makes itself felt again. They have more pressing concerns right now.

Kevin notes a bloody cut on Sam’s head from where he fell, and disappears to retrieve the first aid kit, and Dean sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. For the tenth, or maybe the twentieth, time, he presses his fingers to the pulse point in Sam’s neck, exhaling heavily once he has reassured himself that Sam’s heart is still beating.

Castiel hovers in the middle of the room, unsure of what to do now they have Sam safely in the bunker. He is the least experienced of them all where human medical aid is concerned—a thought bitter enough that he tries not to dwell on it—and he still has no idea what happened here. How did Sam end up possessed by Heaven’s most wanted? What on Earth could have persuaded him to consent? Why did he invite Castiel here, if the sight of him was enough to send Gadreel running for the hills?

And what has Dean been keeping from them?

He sighs and moves to stand beside the bed, placing himself in Dean’s line of sight.

“Don’t, Cas,” Dean says, not lifting his eyes from Sam’s face. Castiel doesn’t need to see them to see his desperation, his fear. “Look—this?” He gestures to indicate Sam’s prone figure, the whole situation. “This isn’t on you. You didn’t know. ’S my fuck-up. I get that.”

“I don’t,” Castiel tells him, frowning. “I still don’t know what happened here. I can’t help you if I don’t understand, Dean.” He is not at all certain he could help if he did understand, but he refrains from saying so.

“I know.” Dean sighs, his shoulders slumping. “Just—later, okay? You wanna help, go—I dunno, research supernatural illnesses or some shit. I can’t do this. Not right now.”

Castiel nods, and turns to leave the room. He glances behind himself once before he lets himself out into the corridor, and sees two souls shrouded in shadow: Dean’s by guilt and grief, Sam’s by whatever ill has befallen him in Gadreel’s absence. He tries not to dwell upon his helplessness, but it comes heavily over him anyway.

Were he still an angel, he could heal Sam’s sickness with a touch of his hand. He could visit Dean’s dreams and learn the truth there, if he had to; though he would prefer not to do so. He could fix this.

Kevin brushes past him as he hurries back down the corridor, mumbling a “Sorry, man,” and not stopping long enough to meet Castiel’s eyes. Castiel sighs, and makes his way to the library.

 _Supernatural illnesses_ is so vague a concept it could probably encompass half the library, but from the dimness of Sam’s soul—weak, as though it is being drained—Castiel surmises that his condition has something to do with the Trials he underwent before the fall. Now that he thinks it over, what he saw in the brief moment before Gadreel left was almost a patchwork: two damaged beings sutured together into a functioning whole. Angelic grace filling in the fissures in a broken human soul—or maybe the other way around.

Before this happened, Dean made it sound as though Sam was beginning to recover from his ordeal. What could have made him desperate enough to accept an angel—an unknown, dangerous angel—into his body?

It seems clear that Dean knew about Gadreel. He expressed no surprise when Gadreel left; only dismay. That must be why he kept the truth from Castiel. If he knew who Gadreel was, he must have realised that no other angel could in conscience let him roam free. Perhaps he feared that others like April and Ephraim would follow Castiel—or even that Castiel would try to harm Gadreel himself.

A part of him hurts, at that thought. Certainly, he has no love for Gadreel—but harm Sam? He did so once, and the regret lives with him still. A part of him bristles at the injustice of being thought a risk. Another part whispers to him that it is no injustice at all.

Castiel sighs, and installs himself in the library.

He begins by looking over Kevin’s notes, though without much hope. Kevin would surely have mentioned it, if he had come across anything relevant. Still, a second pair of eyes sometimes turns up connections that would otherwise go unnoticed, and if Sam’s condition results from the Trials, then the angel tablet makes a logical starting-point. Castiel finds nothing of use, however. The tablet speaks of the Trials, but says little about their aftereffects; just vague mentions of sacrifice. He gets the distinct impression that the sacrificer is not supposed to be around to worry about the aftermath.

Sam’s notes are a greater challenge. For all the stress he exhibits while translating, Kevin is able to keep his work in some semblance of logical order. Sam follows a surface-level-chaotic and apparently Winchester-specific filing system of which Castiel can make little sense. He gets halfway through a folder of notes, having found nothing, and realizes he is starting to develop another headache.

It’s less fierce than the ones he is accustomed to. The empty library is as forgiving an environment as he could hope for, on that score. This is the simple strain of having pored for too long over pages of cramped handwriting. A human thing.

Castiel gets to his feet and finds the bathroom where he showered on his first visit here, searching the cabinet for painkillers and swallowing two Tylenol dry when he finds them. He pours a glass of water in the kitchen, then finds himself hovering in front of the refrigerator, debating the possibility of making lunch.

His culinary skills are lacking, certainly—but even the microwave burrito he ate the last time he was here was comforting. Not just the food itself, but the fact of its having been given to him by Dean. He had experienced hunger—his own, and Jimmy Novak’s—but at that moment he began to understand the ritual significance that humans afford to food; why it carries importance beyond its role as sustenance.

He is fairly sure that Dean sent him to the library simply to give him something to do. If the answers were in there, then Sam would have found them already. At least if Castiel cooked, he would be providing some kind of concrete assistance.

He’s still standing frozen before the refrigerator when he hears the sound of something breaking down the hallway.

Down the hallway—from the direction of the bedrooms.

His footsteps ring in his ears as he runs toward the noise.

Sam is still unconscious when Castiel opens the door to his bedroom, flat on his back with his hands at his sides. Kevin stands in the middle of the room, worry in his eyes. There is a chair pulled up beside the bed, a book abandoned atop it. Kevin must have been watching over Sam when he heard it, too.

At Castiel’s questioning look, he glances briefly to his right. Dean’s bedroom.

“I told him to go talk to you,” Kevin says, and makes an exasperated face. He hesitates. “You want me to come?”

Castiel hovers in the doorway a moment longer, then shakes his head. “I’ve got this,” he says. It doesn’t sound very convincing.

Kevin shrugs and returns to his seat, picking up his book and arranging himself in a posture of unconcern, though Castiel can see the nervousness that thrums beneath the surface of his soul. Kevin looks how he feels.

Castiel turns down the corridor, then remembers the sound of something breaking. Recalls the time he made the mistake of trying to clean up shattered glass with his bare hands, the first time a customer at the Gas ‘n’ Sip dropped a glass container in the aisle. He grabs the medical kit from Sam’s nightstand before he goes, closing the door carefully behind him. He keeps his footsteps slow and quiet as he makes his way down the corridor, as though Dean is a wild animal he does not wish to startle.

Perhaps the thought it not so very inappropriate. Like a creature trapped in a snare, at times like this, Dean is most likely to do harm to himself.

Castiel pauses before the bedroom door, then taps at it gently.

No reply.

He raps with his knuckles this time. “Dean?” he says, into the silence.

“I said _not now_ , Cas.” Dean’s voice is rough. His fear always so quick to turn to anger, as though lashing out might mitigate his own helplessness.

Castiel opens the door.

Then stops in the doorway, taking in the scene before him. The lamp that usually stands on the shelf behind Dean’s bed lies in pieces beside the door.

Dean must have punched the wall a few times as well as hurling the lamp across the room, because he’s sitting on the bed nursing his left hand, an old t-shirt folded up as a makeshift pad beneath his knuckles. There’s a bottle of whiskey open on the nightstand. (Only a few inches gone from it. Small mercies.)

He scowls up at Castiel. “You deaf or something?” he says, but his voice is weak. Castiel can see what lies behind the scowl—the way Dean’s soul reaches out for him like fire caught in the wind, straining to break free. Like that first night in the motel, in Rexford.

Then, he wondered if Dean was going to kiss him. Now, he knows that Dean won’t. Allowing himself anything but punishment at a time like this is not the Winchester way.

“I heard you,” Castiel says, and moves to sit beside Dean on the bed.

“And you decided now was the perfect time to take up being a pain in my ass? Or, you know, go back to it? Not like you ain’t got priors.”

Castiel sighs. “Dean,” he says. “Stop.”

“Stop what?” Dean narrows his eyes. “Stop having more important things to worry about than talking it out when my brother’s unconscious in the next goddamn room?”

There’s tension in the set of his shoulders; he looks as though he might lash out. Castiel ignores it and reaches for his injured hand. Dean resists for a moment, still glaring, but then lets him take it.

Dean’s knuckles are bruised, the skin broken. With all the gentleness he is capable of, Castiel runs a thumb over the cuts, the tender skin. Dean winces, pain—the simple, physical kind; though Castiel has learned in recent weeks not to underestimate that—flaring behind his eyes.

“I meant you should stop hiding,” Castiel tells him, to take his mind off it. He coaxes Dean’s injured hand out of its clenched fist, spreading the fingers to check for broken bones. “Couldn’t this have been avoided if you hadn’t kept things from me? From Sam?” He pauses. “You’re still keeping things from me.”

Dean’s fingers twitch, and Castiel sees him draw up tight; thinks for a moment that he will pull away, close in on himself or run. Then Dean exhales, looks down, his shoulders sagging. “I already told you, Cas—I know I fucked up. You don’t gotta remind me.”

“That isn’t what I’m talking about,” Castiel says. “Whatever happened— _whatever_ happened—I’m sure you believed you were doing the right thing.”

He pauses to root through the medical kit for antiseptic wipes. Waits for Dean to meet his eyes. When it doesn’t happen, he pulls a wipe out of its packet and begins to clean the cuts on Dean’s knuckles, eliciting a hiss and sharp look up.

Castiel makes himself focus on Dean’s eyes instead of looking behind them. It is not so different. They are full of soul anyway, heavy with unshed tears and unvoiced pleas.

“I have faith in you,” Castiel says, quietly. “But how am I supposed to help if you push me away?”

This time, Dean does pull away, angling his body away from Castiel and cradling his injured hand against his chest. “How are you supposed to help if I don’t, Cas?” he says. “Trust me, you were the first guy I called. After—after the last Trial. You couldn’t help then, and you can’t help now.”

Castiel knows the truth of it, but he hears it for what it is: a reflexive attempt on Dean’s part at denying himself solace. At remaining alone because that is what he thinks he deserves.

But right now? Castiel is actually beginning to feel like he is helping. This is painful but necessary, like lancing a boil.

Gently as he is able, he reaches for Dean’s hand and takes it back. He finishes cleaning up the cuts, applies tiny butterfly bandages over them, the way Dean did for him, the night after the Ephraim incident. Maybe the role-reversal isn’t lost on Dean, either, because after a moment the vibrating tension drains out of him, and he watches Castiel work with more resignation than anger on his face.

When he’s done, Dean detaches his hand—carefully, this time; not jerking out of Castiel’s grip as though he wants to run away—and holds it up in front of his face, eyeing Castiel’s handiwork critically.

“Not too bad,” he says, and Castiel hears it for the apology it is.

Perhaps that’s what gives him the courage to inch in closer, to lift his hand and cup the side of Dean’s face, running the pad of his thumb along the bolt of Dean’s jaw. “I had a very good teacher,” he says.

Dean swallows, his throat working. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, and his face twists up with sorrow. If Castiel had only his human eyes, he would think he had made a mistake, would pull away and leave Dean alone with his guilt.

Instead, he inches close, turns Dean’s face toward him so they are nose to nose, and leans in and presses their mouths together.

The breath catches in Dean’s throat. He stills, opens his eyes, and for a moment Castiel thinks he will pull away despite the need that shines in his eyes and pulses red-raw in his soul.

 _Please_ , Castiel thinks, and startles himself with the realization that he needs this at least as much as Dean does. He can’t fix Sam with a touch, or fly back through time and undo whatever brought them here, but he needs to be allowed to do what he can with his human hands, his human heart. To give love.

Dean shudders under his touch—not with discomfort, but with the kind of relief that comes after setting down a heavy load, and that leaves you trembling from the sudden lightness of your limbs. And then—then, Dean parts his lips and kisses back.

It’s tentative, lips moving against lips with a softness unfamiliar to both of them. Castiel dares to dart his tongue out, and Dean makes a low, surprised sound and then goes with it, following his lead. His arms come up around Castiel’s waist, but Dean doesn’t press closer, just holds on and allows himself to be kissed.

Castiel doesn’t know that he expected this. When he’s imagined this scenario, he has always been the one following Dean’s lead, learning from him. This is so human a thing, and he would like to learn it properly. But right now, he understands the fragility of the moment. He understands that Dean will take nothing that is not given to him, because he already thinks that is more than he deserves.

It makes Castiel want to be careful with him. The thought feels sure and solid, as solid as Dean in his arms. It’s something Castiel can work with. He may be inexperienced, but he knows what he wants to do, and the knowing makes him feel a little less helpless.

He leans in, presses Dean onto the mattress, and Dean goes with it. Eyes shut tight, the colors of love and guilt at war inside of him. Rose-gold and bruise purple. There’s a tenderness to him, in this moment; as though he might split apart like overripe fruit if touched too roughly, might spill the guts of his soul all over the bed.

Castiel can admit, privately, that the idea is not without its appeal. The notion of feeling power in his hands again, of being able to take apart a human soul before he puts it back together again, speaks to the same part of him that wants to heal Sam with a touch and put everything back to the way it was with a flick of his wrist. The same part of him that wants to be careful.

But it is not for now. Castiel lets himself put the thought away. Lets himself believe, without examining the belief too closely, that there will be other times for that.

He slides his hands under Dean’s button-down and begins to work it off his shoulders. For a brief, dazed moment, Dean just stares at him. Then he remembers to exhale and pulls his arms out. His hands settle at Castiel’s waist, fingers creeping up beneath the hem of his shirt. He doesn’t speak, but Castiel feels every tremor of need that runs through him, every hesitation; sees them in deep red and gray shadow, playing over the surface of Dean’s soul like ripples on the surface of a body of water.

Carefully, Castiel lifts Dean’s hands and divests him of his Henley. It catches on his chin as Castiel pulls it over his head, and Dean makes a sound that might almost be a laugh. Castiel feels something loosen inside of him.

Dean isn’t smiling when the shirt comes off, but he doesn’t complain when Castiel tosses it onto the floor. If he still wanted to push Castiel away, he would latch onto any excuse for a complaint. Castiel takes the fact that he doesn’t as cause for hope. For a moment, he resists the urge to press their mouths together again, holds back and lets himself look into Dean’s face. Time and care have worn new creases into it, and living in the bunker, insulated from sunlight, has left Dean pale. The freckles that come up on his skin in sunlight are distant memories, the dark shadows under his eyes ever-present.

He is still beautiful.

Gently, Castiel presses the flat of his hand to Dean’s chest, right over his heart, feeling the plane of muscle there, the skin soft even after so many years at war. Dean starts minutely at the touch, his eyes widening. He reaches up—as though he is about to put his good hand over Castiel’s and hold it there—but pulls back at the last second, his fingers curling in on themselves.

For so long, their touches have been comradely or utilitarian. Hugs after long absences; claps on the shoulder after fights; fingers pressed to a forehead and Castiel’s grace zipping through Dean’s body for the second that was all it took to heal. Despite the desperation of the situation, there is something wonderful about being allowed to look his fill, to touch with the reverence he has never had time or opportunity to give before.

A flush works its way up Dean’s face and down his chest, discomfiture threading itself darkly through his soul. The boundaries of what Dean will permit himself are difficult to negotiate. Comfort might be permissible, in this moment; feeling himself the object of admiration, cause to run. Castiel relents and kisses him again, long and slow, pressing him back down on the bed, settling between his legs. He gives an experimental roll of his hips and feels Dean half-hard through his jeans. The small, breathy, thoroughly un-Dean-like noise he makes is gratifying.

Castiel pulls back to look at him. He’s breathing hard through parted lips, his mouth pink from kissing. He looks a little surprised at finding himself like this, half-naked and on his back underneath Castiel.

That’s good, Castiel thinks. If Dean is with him, in the moment, he isn’t buried in the depths of his mind, holed up with his guilt. He isn’t hiding.

As he watches, Dean gives him a shaky smile. Castiel sees it for what it is: a remnant of his usual bravado, the way Dean thinks he ought to feel in situations like this. His hands come up to grasp Castiel’s shoulders, then move to unfasten the top button of his shirt.

Castiel stills for a moment and just watches Dean, the spectrum of colors that swirls across his soul. Dean ducks his head when Castiel meets his eyes, blink hard and focuses on his task.

“Dean.”

Dean looks up at him, a helpless roil of light and dark. Castiel takes both his hands, gently but firmly, and presses them back against the pillow on either side of Dean’s head. Dean blinks again, wets his lips.

“Cas,” he says. It’s the first word he’s said since they kissed, his voice low and ragged.

“Let me do this,” Castiel says. The surety in his voice surprises him. “Let me take care of you.”

Dean’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, but the absence of a refusal is all the answer Castiel needs.

Then Dean meets his eyes again. “But if we’re doing this?” he says. “If we’re really doing this? Don’t you think you oughta… be a little more naked?” The shaky smile is back, and Castiel wants to kiss it from his face.

Castiel puts his head on one side. “Does it bother you?”

“I guess not,” Dean says, but doubt clouds his soul. It takes Castiel a moment to understand.

He can see so much more of Dean than Dean can of him, outside as well as in. There’s something primally appealing about the idea of having Dean spread out naked in front of him while he remains clothed—but that isn’t what either of them needs right now.

Dean needs to not be alone, and Castiel needs to give him that.

He leans in to kiss Dean again, slow and sweet, and then pulls away to unfasten the next button. Dips his head to press another kiss to Dean’s lips. Another button. Dean relaxes by increments beneath him, his soul opening itself up, and finally melts when Castiel discards his shirt and presses them chest-to-chest, breath catching in his throat at being able to feel Dean’s heartbeat against his bare skin.

Castiel lets his hands roam, touching all the skin he can find, trailing his lips down Dean’s neck and across his shoulders, making him groan, pressing a kiss to the soft underside of a wrist and getting a gasp that’s almost surprised in return. He may have little experience with human lovemaking, but Dean’s willingness to let it happen lends him certainty, and he follows his instincts, doing what feels good. It’s easy, obvious, to reach down between them and fumble both of their pants open until their erections slide together, slick with sweat and precome, both of them breathing hard.

Castiel rolls his hips. Slow heat burns up through him, makes his breath stutter at the slide of Dean’s cock against his, at the way Dean arches up against him, muscles straining, his mouth shaping a _Fuck_ that comes out mostly as breath. He sets a slow rhythm—or tries to—but it can’t last, his thrusts quickening involuntarily as Dean shakes apart beneath him, whispering a litany of curses that ends on Castiel’s name as he goes still and comes hot and sticky between them.

Dean’s eyes open after he comes, wide and almost shocked. Something hot and needy takes hold of Castiel, and he fastens his mouth to Dean’s and kisses him hard, moves against him once, twice more, and then it’s over, his come painting Dean’s belly, his arms shaking as he struggles to hold himself up.

 

 

\----

 

Castiel is breathless, afterward; a little shaky. But something at the core of him feels steadier, surer. He looks at his hands, at Dean lying beneath him, and feels _capable_ for the first time since he fell.

And Dean is still watching him, wide-eyed. That part of his soul that opened itself up has not yet been shuttered away.

Dean props himself up on his elbows. He’s a little shaky, too, and something in Castiel notes that with pride. “We should clean up.”

Castiel nods and reaches down for the nearest piece of discarded clothing, which turns out to be his shirt. It needs to be washed anyway, he notes absently; he doubts that Dean will begrudge him the loan of some clothing. He crawls back up the bed, kicking his pants off the rest of the way and laying himself down beside Dean, waiting until Dean settles back against the pillows. A sadness settles inside him at the sight. He would like to let them both stay like this.

He takes a breath. “You should tell me what happened here.”

It hurts, to see the pain that washes through Dean’s soul, the fear and guilt that cast a pall over its colors.

This is necessary, Castiel reminds himself. Human healing hurts.

Apparently Dean understands that, too, because after a moment, he looks Castiel in the eyes, resigned. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess I should.”

 

 

\----

 

By the time Dean has gotten through his story, any appearance of relaxation has left him. He sits up against the headboard, blankets pulled up around him, hunched forward and avoiding Castiel’s eyes.

Castiel thinks about reaching out for him again, but holds back. Dean has told him the truth, and now something new and fever-bright shines beneath the shame in his soul. He won’t rest again, won’t let himself take comfort again, until they have at least started down the road to helping Sam. That, Castiel can understand.

“So,” Dean concludes, crossing his arms defensively over his chest, “I fucked up. And now—” He breaks off, shakes his head. “Everything I touch, man.”

Castiel places a hand on his arm, very lightly. “You should have told Sam,” he agrees. “You should have told me. But I understand why you didn’t.”

Dean gives a low, bitter laugh. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You’re two for two when it comes to trusting the wrong guy. So, you know, can’t say I’m reassured over here.”

Metatron. Crowley. Dean is speaking the truth, and Castiel feels the sting of it. But he sees regret—the blue-purple of a sky after sunset—flare in Dean’s soul the moment the words leave his mouth, and he understands, forgives.

He folds Dean’s uninjured hand in both of his own. “You had no good choices,” he says. “And you were lied to.” He lets his gaze drop to their joined hands. “I bear some of the responsibility, too,” he says. “I vouched for Ezekiel. I didn’t think to question him, though I should know better than anybody that angels lie.”

“You had your own problems, Cas,” Dean says. “Hell, you still do.” He glances up. “How’re you doing with that, anyway? Still getting the headaches? See any more monsters?”

Castiel lets the subject be changed. “Yes, and yes, actually,” he says. “I was attacked by a vampire.” He touches the bandage on his neck. "That's how I got this."

Dean stares at him. Shame washes over his soul—shame at not having noticed before now, perhaps, or at having allowed it to happen at all. Castiel watches him hide it behind a scowl. “When’d that happen? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did.” Castiel frowns as the memory of fighting for his life in that alley—and of how close he came to losing—makes its way back to him. “It happened last night. I called you as soon as I was able to borrow a cellphone.”

“And Sammy picked up.” Dean heaves a sigh, his shoulders sagging.

Castiel can only nod and squeeze his hand. The reminder has unsettled his earlier peace, and he tries to steady himself against it, find his way back to that core of certainty.

“Cas?” Dean’s fingertips touch his face, and he startles, looking up and meeting Dean’s eyes again. “Look, man—I’m sorry. I should’ve asked before now. I just—”

“I understand,” Castiel tells him. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Dean frowns. “Cas—a witch put the mojo on you. That doesn’t ever end well. Other shoe’s gotta drop sometime.”

“Maybe,” Castiel says. “But for now? It means I can help. I can see monsters; I can see souls. I’m willing to live with that as long as I’m able to be of use.”

“You don’t have to—” Dean breaks off. “You can see souls?”

“Yes.” Castiel feels a flip of apprehension in the pit of his stomach, studies Dean’s face for hurt, for betrayal. He can’t control this the way he could as an angel, but it occurs to him now that Dean might still feel it as an invasion of privacy. Especially considering how intimate they have just been.

But Dean only looks thoughtful. “When Ze—Gadreel showed up at the hospital, he said he couldn’t do the normal—y’know.” He reaches up and touches two fingers to Castiel’s forehead, an imitation of his old healing gesture. “He said he was gonna have to fix Sammy from the inside. Like the damage wasn’t just physical. You think maybe he wasn’t bullshitting?”

“What happened when he left does suggest he was doing _something_ to help Sam,” Castiel says. “And Sam’s soul appeared—faint.”

Dean is frowning. “You think if you took a closer look, maybe you’d be able to figure out what’s wrong with it?”

Castiel puts his head on one side. “What do you mean?” he asks. “A closer look?”

“You’ve been in my dreams before.” Dean pauses. “Could you see my soul then? Like, from the inside?”

Castiel nods, and sees a sickly wash of apprehension color Dean’s soul. It doesn’t show on his face, but it feels inevitable. Of course Dean thinks his own inner being something to be ashamed of.

He raises Dean’s hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to Dean’s palm. Dean looks at him for a moment with that same wide-open helplessness he saw earlier, and oh, how Castiel wishes they had time for this.

The look clears from Dean’s face and he goes on, his voice gruff. “What if we got you some African dream root? That stuff lets humans dreamwalk. You could take a look at Sammy’s soul, figure out what’s wrong.”

“It’s possible,” Castiel says. “But I still wouldn’t be able to heal him. I can only see things. I can’t—” He breaks off, looking down at his useless human hands.

“It’s better’n nothing, Cas,” Dean says, his eyes pleading. “Maybe we’ll be able to figure something out.”

He doesn’t sound as though he fully believes it himself. Still, Castiel understands the need to do something rather than nothing, however small that something is.

He finds Dean’s hand with his own again, and laces their fingers together. “Of course,” he says. “I’ll try.”

 

 

\----

 

Castiel has visited Sam’s dreams less often than Dean’s. This place is unfamiliar to him.

He is surrounded by trees. The whole dreamscape is dim. It looks like late evening, not far off getting dark. Castiel blinks a few times, allowing his imagined eyes to adjust to Sam’s imagined darkness.

In the bunker, his body lies in Dean’s bedroom—hastily tidied before they began—with Kevin keeping watch, while Dean sits at Sam’s bedside in the next room. He remembers lying down on the mattress, the twin bright spots of the overhead light and Kevin’s worried soul dazzling him briefly before he closed his eyes. His head was starting to ache again as he passed into dreams.

The dim light here is a relief; but Castiel fears what it portends.

Gradually, he begins to make out the dreamscape. There is a short path ahead of him, leading up to a wooden cabin of the sort Dean and Sam sometimes hide out in when hunting. Castiel looks around one more time, then follows the path and opens the door.

“Sam!”

An open fire sits in the middle of the far wall, an armchair on either side of it. Sam sits in one of them, bolt upright with his hands on his thighs, his expression distant. Though the whole dreamscape is an expression of Sam’s soul, Castiel sees its light within him here, too, as he would in the waking world. It’s weak; barely visible. It almost seems to strain up and away from Sam, like a candle flame in the wind. He doesn’t appear to register Castiel calling his name.

“Sam?” Castiel says again, and approaches, leaning down to put his face in Sam’s field of vision. When Sam doesn’t react, Castiel waves a hand before his eyes.

Sam blinks and looks up. There is a great weariness in the movement. “Cas?” he says. “What are you doing here?”

Castiel seats himself in the opposite armchair and leans forward. “I came to find you,” he says. “Do you remember what happened?”

Sam frowns, and his soul clouds with sickly greens and yellows, the colors of an old bruise. When he looks at Castiel again, his face is troubled. “Kind of,” he says. “I remember this place.” He pauses. “But I don’t remember remembering this place. Does that make sense?”

“This is a dream,” Castiel tells him. “You’re unconscious right now. Have you had this dream before?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, slowly. “Yeah, I was here. It was daylight. Bobby was here with me. And Dean. And—somebody else.”

“The angel,” Castiel says, and Sam stares at him.

“Angel?” Sam shakes his head. “No, you weren’t here.”

“Not me,” Castiel says. He gives a pained smile. “I’m not an angel anymore. I’m talking about Gadreel—Ezekiel, as he was calling himself then. The angel who—” He breaks off, realizing Sam’s eyes are distant again. “Sam?”

“Death,” Sam says. His voice is low. “Death was here. He came for me. I was going to go with him. I _wanted_ to go with him.” He blinks, gives Castiel a bewildered look. “Why didn’t I?”

Castiel sighs. He’s been half-hoping that Sam will remember; that he won’t have to explain this. “Dean,” he says. “He saved you.”

Sam still looks confused. “How? I mean, it was _Death_ , man.”

“An angel,” Castiel tells him. “I wasn’t there. I was already human. So Dean made a deal with another angel.”

“I don’t remember,” Sam says.

“Try.” Castiel leans forward, places his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Last time you were here. What happened?” In dreams, other dreams can seem realer than the waking world. (Perhaps they are. The architecture of Heaven, after all, is little more than a conglomeration of dreams.)

Sam goes quiet, remembering. Castiel sees the pale colors of his soul turn deep, thoughtful blue. Then darken.

“Dean,” Sam says. “He was here. He was telling me to fight. I dunno, he was really adamant about getting me to say _yes_ , for some reason.” He stops. “Another angel.” His eyes widen. “He tricked me. He tricked me into letting some other angel possess me.” Sam’s whole body droops, like the air has been punched out of him. “He’s been lying to me this whole time.” Betrayal darkens his soul, creeps across its surface like smoke.

Castiel squeezes his shoulder. “Gadreel threatened to leave if he told you,” he says. “To let you die. Dean didn’t know he wasn’t to be trusted. He was also lied to, Sam.”

Sam jerks back in his chair, out of Castiel’s grip. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Excuse me if I don’t wanna send him flowers.”

“Sam—” Castiel begins, and then falls silent. He can hardly blame Sam for his reaction. There’s a reason consent remains a hard and fast rule for angels, even in emergencies; a reason he is sometimes glad that Jimmy Novak is dead.

Still, he does not have time right now to be understanding.

“I know you’re angry,” he says. “You have every right to be. But right now you’re still in danger.”

Sam gives him a bitter little smile. “We’re always in danger, Cas. If I waited around until it was safe to get mad, I never would’ve gotten around to freaking out over Santa not being real.”

Castiel peers as him. “But you can’t want—” he says, and then breaks off.

As a he watches, a wisp of light breaks away from Sam’s soul, floating toward the window like smoke—and then out of it, pale as breath in winter air. Sam’s soul dims, just a fraction.

Castiel follows the wisp of light. He stands at the window and looks out.

There is a clearing in the trees outside. And through it, he can see the sky. It’s dark now, almost cloudless, a moon shining bright as a silver coin just above the treeline.

There are holes in the sky.

Great tears, as though torn by the claws of some world-straddling beast—and tiny nicks, and worn spots frayed almost to nothing. Behind them, heart-stopping absence.

The light rises like smoke, hangs silver-pale in the sky, and then leaks out through one of those great rents in the fabric of Sam’s dream. Of his soul. It is bleeding light—bleeding out, slowly but surely. Castiel grasps the windowsill to steady himself, and when he looks down, his knuckles are white.

On second glance, he can see where some of the damage has been repaired. Faint marks cross the sky like airplane trails. Like scars. Gadreel must have done some good, at least. From the length of the trails, those must have been the sites of the greatest damage.

But Gadreel didn’t do enough.

Castiel turns back to face Sam. “You could still die,” he says.

Sam regards him, his face very calm. “Maybe I was supposed to, the first time,” he says.

“You have been supposed to do a lot of things,” Castiel points out. “That was never a good enough reason before.”

That gets him a faint smile. “Maybe not,” Sam says, but then the smile fades and he shrugs. “I still don’t see how I get out of this. Or even if I can.”

The surface of his soul has settled. It is the deep blue of sorrow—but it is calm. Castiel looks at it despairingly, searches within himself for the words that will convince Sam to try to wake up. He doesn’t know that leaving this dream would be enough—but if Sam could be in the waking world, could reconcile with his brother and be among those who love him, he might find the will to search for a cure.

The words don’t come. Before Castiel has time to think of them, or even to say goodbye, the cabin begins to fade around him. Sam grows translucent before his eyes, and when Castiel reaches out to grab him by the arm, his hand slides through it like water.

The next thing he knows is the ceiling of Dean’s bedroom, and Kevin standing over him, saying, “You okay?”

He sits up, swallowing hard. “Yes,” he says. “Thank you.” There are footsteps in the corridor, and Dean appears in the doorway. He’s pale, his soul shot through with worry and exhaustion. Castiel wishes he had it in him to lie. “I’m okay. But Sam isn’t.”


	5. Chapter 5

 

“Sam’s soul is damaged,” Castiel says. “And from what I saw—it seemed Gadreel had been trying to fix it. He was telling the truth about that part.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, well, trying don't pay the bills. Still not much in the plus column if you ask me.”

Castiel inclines his head in agreement, though he sees the helplessness behind Dean’s eyes, the starburst of despair, and wishes he could offer comfort. “It means there’s nothing we can do from here. I’m not even sure there’s anything another angel could do.”

“Great.” Dean groans and lets his head sink into his hands.

“What about Sam?”

Castiel blinks and turns to look at Kevin, seeing Dean do the same from the corner of his eye. “What do you mean?”

“You said there’s nothing we can do _from here_. And that angel said he needed to fix Sam from the inside.” Kevin looks at Castiel. “You talked to Sam, right? He’s still in there?”

“Yes.” Castiel pauses, his heart aching at the hopeful flicker he sees in Dean’s soul. “But if there’s anything he could do to save himself, I don’t know what it is.” He looks down. “More than that, I don’t know if he has the will to.”

“So you couldn’t get through to him,” Kevin says. “Maybe Dean should give it a try. You made it work before, right?” He throws Dean a look, half questioning, half cautious.

Dean doesn’t meet his eyes. He doesn’t ask Castiel what Sam said to him, either, but Castiel suspects he doesn’t need to. “Yeah,” is all Dean says. “Pretty sure that was a one-time deal.”

Kevin rolls his eyes. “Well, we can’t just sit around,” he says. “I’m gonna go back to the tablet. See if there’s anything in there we can use. Might’ve missed something.”

He snags a bottle of painkillers out of the medical kit and leaves. Castiel gets to his feet, moves to sit beside Dean on the bed. Their arms brush, and after a moment, he feels Dean’s weight settle against him. Dean keeps his eyes forward, and Castiel doesn’t push him, sits quietly beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

Eventually, Dean gets to his feet. “I’m gonna, uh,” he says, and jerks his head vaguely in the direction of Sam’s room.

“Of course,” Castiel says, quietly. He remains sitting on the bed for a moment after Dean leaves.

Then, for want of anything more useful to do, he makes for the kitchen. Maybe he’ll finally microwave some of those burritos.

 

 

\----

 

A blast of icy air hits him in the face as he opens the freezer drawer, making his nostrils tingle from the inside, the brain-freeze hitting him like a cinderblock. Castiel squeezes his eyes shut tight and steadies himself with a hand on the kitchen counter until he feels equal to the task of figuring out how to work the microwave.

The cold recedes, but it leaves its ghost behind, a low-level throb in the front of his brain. By the time Castiel is done with the burritos—depositing one in front of Kevin in the library, and giving the other to Dean, who grunts acknowledgement and makes no move to eat it—the headache pulsing behind his eyes has returned. It’s accompanied by the occasional flash of an image from Sam’s dream: brief, searing reminders of Castiel’s inability to help his friends.

Any pleasure he would normally feel in eating is subsumed by the pain in his head, the bitterness of his own uselessness. He might as well be chewing tissue paper. But low blood sugar can be a cause of headaches—Castiel learned that during his first days on the streets—and taking medication on an empty stomach is inadvisable, so he forces half of his own burrito down his throat. He helps himself to more painkillers from the bathroom cabinet, but the headache only intensifies.

Castiel honestly does intend to help Kevin in the library. He doubts his ability to turn up anything Sam hasn’t already found, but he feels the necessity of offering what assistance he can; of doing something rather than nothing. He may be unable to read the tablet itself, but he still knows several of the ancient human languages—those in which texts adjacent to the Word were written. The mechanical work of translation ought not to be beyond him.

But the words swim before his eyes, and the lamps in the library are too bright, and when Kevin says uncertainly, “Uh, are you okay?” and Castiel looks up to meet his gaze, the single light of Kevin’s soul pierces through him so violently he almost falls out of his chair.

Castiel squeezes his eyes shut. Opens them again, and it’s like he is looking into the sun. He winces and levers himself to his feet with one hand on the tabletop.

“I’ll go get a glass of water,” he says.

Kevin says something as he leaves, but Castiel’s brain refuses to make sense of it.

The kitchen is lit more brightly still, and Castiel has to shade his eyes with one hand as he searches for a glass and runs the faucet. The water is cool and pleasant, sweet on his tongue, but does nothing to ease the pain behind his eyes.

Another twinge, and his hand shakes. He hears the crash before he realizes he has dropped the glass.

“Castiel?” Kevin appears in the doorway, frowning. Castiel does not know him well—they could hardly be called friends—but still, a flurry of concern colors the surface of his soul. He shakes his head. “Dude, you don’t look so good. Seriously. You should go crash out.”

“I need to—” Castiel stops, the rest of his sentence refusing to come to him. There’s a mess of water and glass shards around his feet. He should clean it up. It’s just that he can’t remember how, and the light hurts his eyes so much that he can’t think.

“I’ll get it,” Kevin says. “Just—don’t pass out on me, okay? Come on.”

He takes Castiel by the arm. With a sigh, Castiel submits to being led like a blind man through the twisting corridors of the bunker. He keeps his eyes tightly shut and follows Kevin’s lead, wincing and coming to a halt when he hits his shin on a piece of furniture.

“Shit,” Kevin says. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Castiel says. His voice sounds distant, as though it doesn’t quite belong to him.

“You should, uh. I guess you should probably sleep, or something?” Kevin says. Castiel cracks an eyelid and finds that he’s looking at a bed. Dean’s bed.

He supposes Dean is unlikely to leave Sam’s side anytime soon. And none of the other bedrooms is made up. He manages a smile. “Thank you,” he says.

“Sure,” Kevin says. “Uh, anytime.” He lets himself out.

Castiel sinks down onto the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose. It occurs to him that he’s echoing a gesture he has seen Dean make, when he is tired, or exasperated, or simply doesn’t know what to do. His head still hurts.

Gritting his teeth, he toes off his shoes and slips out of the sweatpants he is wearing. They’re Dean’s, a little too big for him around the middle, but comfortable enough. The boxer shorts and t-shirt he is wearing belong to Dean, too. They smell faintly of his detergent.

Castiel turns out the lamp—a blessed relief—and crawls under the covers. The pillows are stacked up in the center of the bed; Dean obviously sleeps with a mound of them. Castiel spreads them out, placing one on each side, and turns his face into the one under his head. It smells like Dean, too. His hair gel, his soap, the clean, warm smell that is just Dean.

It is oddly comforting, for all that he knows Dean himself is in no state to provide comfort right now. After so many weeks without his friends, it feels like being home.

Castiel closes his eyes and breathes it in, and after a time, he sleeps.

 

 

\----

 

He wakes when he feels the mattress shift under him. Castiel blinks and sits up, shreds of sleep still clinging to his consciousness, and means to say, “What time is it?” though what comes out is more like “Whmf?”

“Hey, Cas.” Dean’s voice. The overhead light is still out, the door open a crack, providing the only illumination in the room. Castiel can’t make out Dean’s face, just the edges of his profile, his lips touched by the faint light, but he can see Dean’s soul.

It is calmer than it was, glowing a dull, sickly color. Settled into resignation, guilt having made itself at home in Dean’s heart and settled down to gnaw away steadily.

It hurts to look at, but Castiel does not close his eyes.

“Hey,” he echoes, and reaches out to take Dean’s hand.

He feels the tension there, sees hesitation flare brightly in Dean’s soul before it dies down and Dean turns his hand palm-up, allowing Castiel to lace their fingers together.

“How you doing?” Dean asks him.

Castiel shrugs and takes a moment to examine himself. He still has a headache, but the pain is not so acute now. It’s a dull ache; not the sharp, cold burn of stars exploding inside his head. “Better than I was,” he says.

Dean shifts uncomfortably beside him. “You think the dream root had something to do with it?” He lifts his free hand, fingers hovering above his own temple. His soul lights up, little twinges of fiery nervousness, and if he had the strength, Castiel would pull Dean close and soothe it all away with his hands. Of course—of course Dean would find a way to make this his fault, too.

Castiel does not have the strength. When he goes a moment without saying anything, Dean stiffens and pulls his hand away, drawing in on himself. Something in his profile tightens, a grim set to his jaw. “Shit,” he breathes out. “Cas, I’m—”

“Don’t,” Castiel says, and takes his hand back. “Dean—honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never had cause to take dream root before, and witches weren’t a problem to which I paid much attention. It’s not impossible that the dream root was part of this, but I have a feeling it would have happened anyway.”

A pause, and then Dean says, “It’s been getting worse?”

“It fluctuates. It’s worse the more people I’m around.”

Dean nods. “I get it,” he says, and stands up. “I can leave you alone.”

“No.” Castiel’s voice comes out a little louder than he intends it to. He takes in a breath and speaks more levelly. “Being alone hasn’t exactly been helpful either.”

Dean hesitates for a moment, but then sits. Castiel sees the relief wash over him, clear as water, even as concern furrows his brow. “What do I do?” he asks.

“Be here.” Castiel says. He watches the flurry of uncertainty that clouds the surface of Dean’s soul, and when he can’t be sure that Dean has understood him, he scoots over, making a clear space for another body on the bed.

A beat, and then Dean says, “What the hell, I was gonna turn in anyway.” He gets to his feet, and Castiel hears the sounds of his boots being kicked off and hitting the floor somewhere near the foot of the bed.

Castiel peers at him in the dim light. “Sam?” he asks.

“Still the same.” The line of Dean’s shoulders tightens; Castiel sees him force himself to relax. “Kevin just woke up. Said he’d take a shift.”

“Just woke up?” Castiel frowns. “How long was I asleep?”

“Few hours,” Dean says, discarding his jeans. Those go onto the back of a chair, not the floor, which Castiel registers vaguely as a good thing. “Just gone midnight. Kid’s sleep schedule is fucked, I’m telling you.”

“Oh,” Castiel says, and wonders if that should be his cue to get up. Dean and Sam never sleep more than a few hours a night on the road, and he has gotten used to tiled floors and motel rooms where neon light shines into his eyes through the gap between the drapes. Logic says he’s had enough; though his head still feels like it is weighted with lead and standing up feels as impossible as scaling Everest.

“Dude,” Dean says, as though reading his thoughts. “You look beat. When was the last time you even slept before today?”

Castiel blinks. “Thursday?” he guesses, deciding his attempt at a nap in the car doesn't count.

Dean shakes his head. “Go back to sleep,” he says, and a moment later, Castiel feels the mattress sink again as Dean lies down beside him.

They stay side-by-side, not touching, and they do not speak. But when Castiel wakes again in the small hours, he finds Dean pressed against his side, Dean’s arm slung over his middle, the light of Dean’s soul still and undisturbed, for once, in his sleep.

Castiel is sure that is simply exhaustion, not peace. But he’ll take it. He closes his eyes again.

 

 

\----

 

They pass the next two days like this. When he feels able, Castiel sits in the library with Kevin, or at Sam’s bedside, or putters around the bunker, busying himself with mundane, necessary tasks. He prepares coffee and heats up food from the freezer. (Dean looks dubious when he offers to cook anything more involved, muttering something about the possibility of his burning the whole damn place down, and Castiel is rather grateful not to be taken up on it. It’s one of the human skills he has yet to master, and the reminder of his inexperience hurts in ways he prefers not to examine.) He changes bedcovers, attempting to imitate Dean’s hospital corners, and though the final product lacks symmetry, there is pleasure in falling asleep with clean sheets against his skin. He sorts laundry, and just once or twice, buries his face in a shirt fresh out of the dryer, breathing in its smell as though he might absorb this place—absorb _home_ —into his being via osmosis.

He found these things tiresome, when he first became human. Now, he comes to appreciate the repetition, how little mental effort they demand of him, and how they allow him to care for those around him despite his current affliction. They become comforting.

When his headaches become unbearable, he retreats to Dean’s bedroom, turning out the light and burying his face in the pillows. Sometimes Dean comes and sits beside him for a time.

Though the bunker has several spare bedrooms, Dean does not offer to make one up for him. In his lower moments, Castiel wonders if that means his presence here is still temporary.

But sometimes at night, when they are both exhausted, Dean crawls into bed beside him.

They don’t have sex again, but they gravitate toward one another in their sleep, and Castiel wakes in the night with Dean’s face pressed against his neck or between his shoulder blades, Dean’s arms wrapped around him as though he is the only spar in a shipwreck.

In these moments, he feels a little stronger. In these moments, for all his human weakness, he no longer doubts his welcome here.

 

 

\----

 

Dean spends the first part of the morning sitting at Sam’s bedside, watching his brother’s pale face as though he will rouse Sam with the force of his gaze. The flame of Sam’s soul burns lower by steady increments, but there is something close to calm about it. Dean’s is similarly still, but there is nothing close to calm about it. It sinks slowly but surely into the sick green mire of guilt.

Sometime around midday, Dean gets abruptly to his feet. He retrieves his laptop from the library and returns to his seat in Sam’s room, balancing it on his knee. For a moment, he stares at the screen; then he pulls up a search engine and begins to type.

Castiel does not know what he is looking for—he is not even sure that Dean knows himself—but his soul brightens a little, and so Castiel doesn’t push him for answers.

 

 

\----

 

It’s morning on the third day. Castiel walks into Sam’s room with a cup of coffee in each hand. Both black and thick with sugar: he’s found that this works best for chasing away the tail-ends of his headaches. Though they’re starting to blur into each other, now, the washed-out feeling that accompanies the end of one overlapping the dull thud of the next starting up in his temples.

Dean has showered and changed his clothes, at least, but he’s hollow-eyed and unshaven. The couple hours’ sleep he caught last night at Castiel’s side were clearly not enough.

“Drink this,” Castiel tells him, and deposits the coffee mug on Sam’s nightstand.

Dean reaches for the mug without looking up from his laptop. “Come to Nebraska.” He says it a little too quickly, as though he is afraid he won’t get the words out if he thinks about them.

Castiel frowns and sets down his own coffee, leaning in to look over Dean’s shoulder.

The screen shows the website of a faith healer based in Fremont. Ruth Tramontini. No photographs of her, but there are Bible verses quoted on the homepage; shots of grateful congregation members with eyes shining and hands clasped in prayer. Even if Castiel didn’t know there was no God in Heaven, this would look like a con.

“I know it ain’t legit,” Dean says, toneless, still not looking at him. “Ain’t whatever it’s pretending to be, anyway.”

Castiel nods, eyeing him cautiously.

“There was this one time—years ago. Before you knew us. Me and Sammy went to check this guy out. That was Nebraska too, funny enough. Ford City.” There’s something going unsaid in there, a _why_ that Dean isn’t willing to share. Castiel reads it in the momentary way he curls in on himself, the flare of some brief remembered pain in his soul. It fades as briefly as it came—insignificant, perhaps, in the face of all the pains that have followed. Dean shakes himself. “Anyway, turned out he honestly thought he was doing the real thing. His wife was behind it. Got a reaper on a leash, sent it after whoever she thought deserved to die instead of the person whose number was actually up.”

“She interfered with the natural order.”

Dean flashes him a small, mirthless smile. “Sounds kinda tame now, don’t it?”

Castiel regards him. There is something new, threading itself through the sick guilty color of his soul. Golden and warm. Hope, perhaps—or desperation.

“You’re saying that you’re aware of the risks,” Castiel says, “but you want to go anyway.”

The smile drops off Dean’s face, leaves him looking flattened-out and pale. “I gotta check it out, Cas,” he says. “I gotta try.”

Castiel takes the laptop from him. Dean gives it up without resisting.

“This could be another angel,” Castiel allows, after peering at the screen a moment longer. It’s possible: one of his sisters using her gift for good, instead of joining the infighting. There are those among his brethren who might be so inclined—and it is those who might be open-minded enough to help a Winchester. Though that still leaves the question of whether Sam will allow himself to be helped by another angel.

“You could tell, right?” Dean says. “If she is one of your guys. If she could help Sam.” There is a plea in his eyes.

In his heart, Castiel feels little hope, but he nods. “I’ll come with you.”

 

 

\----

 

The drive to Fremont is three hours at a legal speed; less, with Dean behind the wheel. Castiel begins the journey in the front passenger seat, resting his forehead against the cool glass of the window, but the vibration of the Impala as they jolt over a pothole reverberates painfully inside his head. Dean keeps elbowing him in the arm and then apologizing for it as he checks his cell phone for the tenth or twentieth or hundredth time, Kevin having been left with strict instructions to call them if anything in Sam’s condition changes and to text regularly even if it doesn’t.

In the end, Castiel curls up on the backseat, his coat folded beneath his head for a pillow. He runs his hand over the worn leather of the seat, the indents and grooves worn into it.

As children, Sam and Dean must have curled up here when they got sick. After they lost their mother, the back of this car was the closest thing to a bedroom either of them had.

The thought either comforts him, or makes him feel doubly pathetic. He cannot decide which.

They stop to eat—or, in Castiel’s case, to push food around the plate, his stomach roiling every time he contemplates putting a forkful in his mouth. The noise of the busy diner and the flickering light above their booth do nothing to keep his head from hurting, and he swallows down painkillers with the dregs of his coffee. Not enough liquid: the whole thing turns to a bitter paste on the back of his tongue, making him grimace and struggle not to gag. His eyes water.

When he blinks them clear, he finds Dean watching him across the booth, his cell phone momentarily forgotten on the tabletop. The colors of his soul are muted, a low burn that Castiel recognizes as worry.

Castiel squints back at Dean. “What?”

Dean sighs. He fidgets with his fork—then sees Castiel’s wince as the tines scrape against his plate, and sets it down hastily. “You look like hammered crap.”

“Thank you for noticing.”

Dean flinches minutely, inside and out. “I didn’t mean—c’mon, Cas. Let’s go find a motel. You need somewhere to crash.”

“We’re only thirty minutes from the town,” Castiel says, trying to ignore the throb in his eyeballs. “You said so yourself. I can wait.”

“Or you can go lie down in an actual bed before you puke all over my car seats, and I can go check out the place this Ruth chick works from.”

“You need me to tell you if she really is an angel,” Castiel points out. “If she’s been living among humans undetected since the Fall, she likely has some practice at not giving herself away.”

Dean sighs and squeezes his eyes shut as though he is the one with the headache. “Yeah, I need you,” he says. “I need you not about to pass out on me, because if this chick is something we need to hunt instead of something that might help us, then I can’t gank her ass and watch your back at the same time. So quit arguing and get in the damn car, okay?” He’s glowering, but there’s something warm there, in the center of his soul. At the heart of his worry. The same glow of love and fear that Castiel sees in him when he looks at Sam.

Castiel reaches across the table and brushes the back of Dean’s hand with his fingers. It is the lightest of touches, but Dean’s eyes go wide. The colors of his soul lighten for an instant.

Castiel musters a smile. “Does that mean you’re picking up the check?” he says.

Dean smiles back at him—a faint, involuntary thing, a little surprised at itself.

Castiel’s head still hurts, but for a moment, he does not mind so much.

 

 

\----

 

He dozes for an indeterminate amount of time in the motel room. The gray afternoon light outside fades gradually through the gaps in the blind. Castiel opens his eyes—grateful for the darkness—and narrows them again to check his new cell phone, retrieved before they left Lebanon from the box of miscellaneous handsets in the Impala’s trunk.

It shows a text from Dean, half an hour ago. _Church was a bust. Prayer meeting tomorrow, check her out then. Gonna pick up tacos, bitch now if not good with you._

He’s surprised when the thought of food makes his stomach grumble, and he sits up a little in the bed, clenching his teeth in anticipation of a stabbing pain in his temple.

It doesn’t come—just the dull background ache of an ordinary headache.

The dark room has helped, he guesses, and the silence. And the solitude; the distance from other souls.

The thought sinks inside him like a stone. Castiel does not wish loneliness to be his only relief. He has had quite enough of it lately.

As though the world has read his thoughts, he hears the click of Dean’s key in the door. It opens a second later, and Dean’s face is momentarily illuminated by the neon-blue light of the motel sign outside. It washes him out, shows up his tiredness, the bags under his eyes.

But a surprised little smile breaks over his face to see Castiel sitting up in the bed, a tiny spark of warm light kindling at the center of his soul. He deposits the bag of takeout he is carrying on the table and crosses the room, the door closing behind him with a soft _snick_ that almost doesn’t hurt Castiel’s head.

“How’s your brain-ache?” Dean’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle.

“Better, I think.” Castiel blinks a few times, focusing on Dean’s face in the dark. “I read your message. You didn’t speak with Ms. Tramontini.”

Dean shakes his head, the smile falling from his face, the light of his soul dimming. “We’ll head down there in the morning. If you’re up to it.”

Castiel regards him sternly. “We’ll go.”

For a second, Dean looks as though he is about to argue, but all he says is, “You hungry?”

“Actually, yes.” That earns Castiel another smile, another small bright flicker of hope.

They eat together in relative silence, Castiel propped up against the pillows, Dean facing him at the foot of the bed, legs stretched out so his bare foot brushes Castiel’s hip through the bedcovers. Castiel does not know whether the touch is deliberate. He watches Dean between bites of taco, the colors of his soul that change and brighten and fade with his thoughts.

Mostly they fade. But by the time he is done eating, Castiel finds that watching them is too much for him. He sets his trash on the nightstand and closes his eyes, letting his hands fall into his lap.

“Cas?” The worry in Dean’s voice has him opening his eyes again, and he sees how it muddies the colors of Dean’s soul.

“I’m fine,” he insists, but he cannot keep his eyes open.

“You don’t sound fine.”

Castiel sighs and starts to get up, using his hands to steady himself against the bed. “I should drink some water.”

“Then _I’ll get it_.” Dean’s hands find his shoulders and steer him back toward the bed, more carefully than he expects. He thinks that he should object, but can’t find it in himself. Instead he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the pillows, taking the cool glass of water gratefully when Dean hands it to him.

He drains half of it in a single gulp, and then holds the glass to his forehead. The cold eases the pounding in his skull for a moment, but only a moment, and Castiel sighs and sets it back on the nightstand.

It takes him by surprise, when Dean’s hand finds his. Just a brush of calloused fingertips over his knuckles, at first—as much a hesitation as a touch. He feels Dean linger there for a moment, take a breath, then lace their fingers together, holding on tightly to Castiel’s hand.

Castiel does not know which of them Dean is trying to reassure, but he guess it does not matter much. He lays his hand on top of Dean’s.

Gradually, he feels Dean inch up the bed to lie alongside him, until they’re pressed together, Dean’s lips at his hairline, Dean’s breath tickling the skin at his temple. Castiel doesn’t open his eyes, but he turns his face to Dean, leans in to rest his forehead against Dean’s shoulder. He feels how Dean’s breath catches in his chest at the touch and has to fight the urge to crack an eyelid to see what he is feeling.

“What is it?” he says, instead.

Dean is silent for a moment. Then he seems to remember that Castiel cannot see his face, and says, “Don’t worry about it, Cas. It ain’t your problem.”

Castiel shifts on the bed, doing his best to glare without opening his eyes. “You’re not helping me by refusing to talk to me, Dean. I know I’m of little use to you right now—”

“Cas, don’t—”

“I know I’m of little use right now,” Castiel repeats. “So at least let me listen. That I can still do.”

Dean heaves a sigh, and says nothing for a moment. His arm finds its way around Castiel’s waist, then, and he squirms to make himself comfortable. Castiel doesn’t open his eyes, but he feels Dean’s breath warm against his lips, the tips of their noses bumping together.

“I fucked everything up,” Dean says, at long last. “I’m losing Sammy, and now—” He pauses, and Castiel hears him swallow. “Now it feels like I’m losing you, too. It’s on me. All of it.”

A few days ago, Castiel would have agreed with that assessment. He knows there is truth in it, still. Even if they somehow find a cure for Sam, the damage Dean has done to their relationship will not be easily fixed. And if Dean had not sent him away from the bunker, Castiel would never have been in Rexford, never crossed paths with the witch who cursed him.

Castiel cannot find it in him to be angry. The part of him that resents is buried deep under other things—under fear and love and the simple human need to offer help, the need to hold on to the people he loves for as long as he can, until this spell burns the brain out of his skull or leaves him paralyzed and drooling in some hospital bed.

He squeezes Dean’s hand. “You couldn’t have known,” he says.

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“And torturing yourself? Does that make it better?”

“You know it—” Dean breaks off. “Fuck. Man, I should be the one doing the comforting here. You got some witch putting the Cordelia Chase on you and here I am spilling my guts.”

“I’m not an invalid, Dean,” Castiel says, and ignores the snort he gets in return. “I’m your friend, and I’d rather you treated me as your friend.” He pauses, swallowing around a twinge of nervousness that makes itself felt above all his other pains. “More than your friend, if you’ll have me.”

A brief, agonizing silence. Then: “‘If you’ll have me’? What is this, a costume drama? But yeah, Cas. Like you even need to—” Pause. Exhale. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Castiel tells him. “Just—” He leans in closer, finds Dean’s lips without opening his eyes. “Just—this.”

Dean takes the hint. He stops apologizing, stops talking, and just returns the kiss.

It is a soft, unhurried slide of lips against lips; not a prelude to anything. Dean slides his hand up Castiel’s arm, cups the side of his face, traces the line of Castiel’s cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. Castiel is not sure he remembers ever being touched so gently before; but this, he cannot bring himself to resent. This is not pity. This is Dean holding on to him, the only way he knows how, and Castiel wraps his free arm around Dean’s waist and holds on, too.

He must fall asleep shortly afterward, because he comes awake again, briefly, in the early hours, his ears ringing with the memory of a dream.

There was a voice. Somebody was calling him. He can’t remember who or why; only that it felt important.

Dean shifts in his sleep and snuggles in closer.

Castiel closes his eyes again, but the dream does not return.

 

 

\----

 

Pain greets him like an old friend in the morning, driving all remnants of the dream from his mind. Castiel swallows more painkillers with his coffee, then brushes his teeth and splashes water on his face in the dark because the light above the bathroom mirror makes his eyes hurt.

He tries not to look at Dean. He is not sure whether he avoids doing so because the light of Dean’s soul makes his eyes hurt, or because the worry in Dean’s eyes makes his soul hurt.

Dean seems to understand—or perhaps he is simply wrapped up enough in his worry about Sam that it keeps him quiet. He goes out to pick up breakfast that neither of them eats, and when he returns, he produces a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, the tag still hanging off them, from his jacket pocket and holds them out to Castiel.

“Thought this might help,” is all he says, not meeting Castiel’s eyes.

Castiel manages a weak smile. “Thank you,” he says, and means it, and puts the sunglasses on.

They shield him from the cold morning light outside, and he is grateful for them as he sits in the Impala’s front passenger seat, his eyes closed, his skull rattling with the vibration of the engine. But when they climb out of the car and join the line outside the building where Ruth Tramontini works, the light of the assembled souls cuts right through the sunglasses, sears his retinae as though he is staring directly at the sun.

Castiel stumbles a little as the line shuffles forward, and is saved from falling only by Dean’s hand on his arm. He winces as he steadies himself.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice in his ear, short with the effort of hiding his disappointment. “You oughta go back to the room. Call a cab. I’ll figure this one out by myself.” Dean looks at his feet. “I shouldn’t have made you come.”

“You didn’t make me do anything,” Castiel tells him. He sets his jaw; hopes that the set of his face makes him appear stronger than he feels. “We’re here now. I’m not leaving.”

Dean sighs, but doesn’t argue the point. Castiel tries to find something other than the crowd of people to look at.

His eyes fix themselves on the advertising banner above the doors. The sign of the Cross on one end; soft-focus clouds and sunlight on the other. No picture of Ruth Tramontini herself.

There were no photographs of her on the website, either. The fact strikes Castiel as odd. The kinds of humans who aspire to Godly power tend not to shy from fame.

Perhaps it is a good sign. Perhaps this healer truly is one of his sisters, keeping her human face hidden in order to avoid attention from the friends and family of her vessel.

He touches Dean’s arm, opening his mouth to share the thought—but then they step through the door into a room crowded with star-bright human souls, and Castiel has to grit his teeth to keep himself from crying out in pain.

Perhaps Dean casts him a startled sideways look. Perhaps fear uncoils itself, snake-like, through his soul. Castiel does not see it, if so. He is dazzled by the light.

“Here,” he hears Dean say, and Dean’s hands guide him down one of the rows of chairs. Something touches the backs of his knees. “Sit your ass down.”

“ _Excuse_ me,” another voice begins. Castiel cannot tell whether she is objecting to Dean’s language, or whether they have pushed to the front of the line, but she goes abruptly quiet, and Castiel can imagine the glare on Dean’s face.

“ _Sit_ ,” Dean tells him again, and he sinks gratefully into the chair.

If Dean says anything else, it is lost in the babble of voices. Castiel grips the sides of his chair, fixes his eyes on the only empty space in the room: the pulpit at the front. It only helps a little.

The room quiets abruptly, then.

Castiel does not see her face as she walks onto the stage. Her soul eclipses it: fiery red, redolent with power.

It is an old power. Older than she is, certainly. But not Heavenly. And he recognizes it.

“Cas?” Dean’s whisper makes him start. “You see something?”

Castiel stares, frozen to his chair.

Tramontini does not install herself behind the pulpit. Instead, she makes her way down into the center aisle, stooping to speak to a man in the front row. She must be talking, but Castiel cannot hear the words.

“Cas?”

He squints harder. Yes: her lips are moving. And her face—the last time he saw it was in Rexford, outside the Gas ‘n’ Sip. Red fire emanating from her fingertips as she cursed him.

“She’s not an angel,” he gets out. “It’s her.”

Dean’s soul roils with confusion. “It’s who, Cas?”

Castiel's voice refuses to come out. He swallows; gestures weakly at himself in place of words.

The man in the front row rises to his feet as Tramontini speaks to him, turning to face the crowd. He wears a patch over his left eye. She says something, and people begin to rise to their feet in ones and twos, hands raised in supplication. There is an impression of singing. Castiel hears it as though from somewhere very far away.

Tramontini lays hands on the man’s head, and magic flares redly from the spot where she touches him. Castiel feels it like a solar flare, like a red-hot poker through the eyeball. He doubles over in his chair, and would fall out of it if not for Dean’s steadying hands.

“Cas,” Dean is saying, his voice cracking with worry. “Cas!”

Castiel cannot answer him. The man in the front row rips off his eyepatch and falls to his knees, his hands clasped above his head, his eyes shining their gratitude at an empty Heaven. His soul radiates joy. Castiel cannot tear his eyes away. He _hurts_.

Everything is so bright, like an overexposed photograph. The world blisters away before him.

Light pours in through his eyes as he passes out.

 

 

\----

 

He is aware only in fragments, after that.

A commotion of movement and noise that he hears as though he is underwater. Figures bending over him. Trying to shield his eyes from the light of their souls, then losing consciousness again for an indefinite time. Tramontini’s face, looking down at him in shock, then in recognition, then in fear. Dean’s hand running through his hair. Dean’s voice saying his name, and his own saying, _I’m sorry_.

His head spins. He can no longer tell light from darkness. They swallow him, over and over.

His consciousness detaches from his self.

He feels it spreading out, diffusing through the world. He sees all of it. Every shadow and every spark of magic, every soul. They are all the same. Parts of a canopy of light and life, burning so bright, linking everything. The blood in the arteries of the world. He flows through them with it.

He is becoming a part of it; no longer himself.

He is dissolving. He knows it to be true.

And then a voice says his name.

At first, he thinks it must be Dean. In the other place—the real place, where he fell unconscious on the floor of a fake healer’s chapel. The thought breaks his heart. He is fading, and he cannot help, and he will have to leave Dean and Sam alone in their separate worlds…

 _Cas?_ the voice says, and it sounds—surprised. Not fearful, just open and curious. _Cas, what are you doing here?_

It comes to him that the voice is not Dean’s.

He reaches out toward it with his mind.

It is not Dean, but he knows it well.

_Sam?_


	6. Chapter 6

_ _

 

_Cas._

Yes: Sam’s voice. But it’s weak, coming to him as though from a great distance. Castiel gathers himself—whatever that means in this non-place—and reaches out toward it.

 _Yes_ , he thinks in reply, _it’s me_ , and he hears his own voice, or feels it. A vibration somewhere inside of him, but one that comes without pain. It occurs to him that there is no pain in this place. How could anyone feel pain without a body, without reality?

It seems clear that that is not what this is. Rather, it is the layer that overlies reality, or underlies it. Magic. Dream. The Veil between life and death: that is part of it, too. The world that the spell made him see, in its entirety.

 _Cas?_ Sam again, but fainter this time. _Cas! Come back. You’re disappearing._

Castiel feels a pang of sadness, deep and sudden, remembering how he got here. The witch posing as a faith healer. He realizes that he did not have time to warn Dean before he lost consciousness, and wants to shudder.

Dean can handle a single witch, he tells himself. Dean will be fine.

Then, worse, he remembers what they were doing there in the first place. Sam, lying unconscious in his bed back at the bunker, the light bleeding out of his soul and no will left in him to fight.

 _Yes_ , he thinks in Sam’s direction. _I’m disappearing. So are you._

What echoes back to him is resignation. _That’s okay._

No. No: it is not okay.

Castiel can accept his own death. He knows the frailty of humans, and he knows there are myriads of his own brothers and sisters who would be only too happy to put an end to him. He realizes he never really expected to survive long.

But if Dean is to lose him, he cannot lose Sam too. And if Castiel can hold out no hope for himself, he can at least give it to somebody else. To his true family.

(His only family, for a long time now.)

He marshals his thoughts as best he can. Focuses them on this one single thing and sends them out, one last message.

No: one last prayer.

He puts into it all that he knows of Sam. How needed he is, and how loved. How his smile can light up a room, can ease both Dean’s burdens and Castiel’s own. The seriousness of his expression when he is focused on a case. How sincerely he hurts for each life he is unable to save, each family he is unable to spare grief—and how rare that is, how human and how precious. The admiration with which Kevin regards him, not simply for his intelligence, but for his strength—his ability to survive being chosen not by God, but by Lucifer, and still retain the core of his self. How that affords the frightened young prophet a measure of hope.

And how good a friend he has been to Castiel. How steadfast. How forgiving in the face of betrayal.

How much poorer all their lives would be without him.

Castiel collects all of these things, holds them for a moment in his mind. He focuses them all into one last bright stream of consciousness. And then he directs it right at the source of Sam’s voice. An offering of life; of hope.

He cannot think of a better way to use the last of his strength.

The last thing he hears is Sam’s voice again: a soft, surprised _Oh._

After that, there is only light.

 

 

 

\----

 

Castiel regains awareness an indefinite time later.

He breathes in deeply, savoring the clean cold mineral taste of the air. Then is occurs to him to be surprised that he _can_ breathe, that he can taste, that he can feel anything at all.

There is something rough beneath his palms. The sky above him is pale and clear and his feet are wet.

He blinks and looks down, and finds that he is sitting on the ground.

No: on a boardwalk, at the side of a still lake. His bare feet dangle off the edge, the water splashing gently around his ankles. It’s cold, but Castiel does not shiver. He feels no discomfort.

This is a dream. Not his dream, though he knows it almost as well as if it were. He visited it once, out of necessity, and found it so beautiful he has carried its image in his mind ever since—that peaceful place where Dean used to go in his few hours of sleep, in those first years after his return from Hell. It is hazier now than Castiel remembers it being.

Perhaps it is because of the spell.

Or perhaps Dean finds it more difficult to conjure peace, now.

Castiel breathes in again. There is a strange flavor to the air, he decides. A few moments pass before he is able to place it. Dream root.

A few more, and he feels Dean’s presence at his side.

Castiel turns to look at him. “You put your dream into my head,” he says. It seems like the most logical thing in the world.

Maybe so. Dreams have a logic of their own, separate from that which governs reality.

Dean smiles, though it looks like a struggle, and despite everything, Castiel feels a small warmth kindle inside of him. “Well, you ain’t exactly taking my calls right now,” Dean says.

Castiel pauses a moment before asking, “I’m still alive?”

“Just about.” Dean looks straight in front of him, throat working as he swallows. Castiel reaches out to take his hand, and Dean blinks rapidly, stares down at it in surprise.

“And you’re okay?” Castiel presses.

Dean looks up at him. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

He falls silent, then, frowning to himself, as though unsure of what he means to say next. Castiel keeps hold of his hand.

“So, uh, I wanted to ask,” Dean goes on, eventually. “Before you passed out. You were trying to tell me something, and—you looked pretty freaked about it.”

Castiel’s heart sinks. Dean must have thought he had seen something—some sign that the faith healer would be able to help them. Why else would he have done this? Finding one’s way into the space between worlds, locating a single soul there, finding a way to talk to it—that must have been a difficult task, and more difficult still without Sam there to help. And Castiel has nothing to give him in return.

He consoles himself with the knowledge that if Dean is here, then at least the witch did him no harm, and sighs. “It was nothing that could help Sam.”

Dean looks at him curiously; without the disappointment he expects. “You don’t—” Dean breaks off, shaking his head. “This isn’t about that.” He gives Castiel’s hand a gentle squeeze. The dreamed touch of his fingers is more reassuring than it ought to be. It makes Castiel feel as though this is real.

“The faith healer,” Castiel tells him. “She wasn’t an angel. She was the witch who cursed me.” He frowns. “Dean, if this isn’t about Sam—what _is_ it about?”

Dean just smiles at him. His smile is easier now, which Castiel cannot understand. He squeezes Castiel’s hand again, and opens his mouth as if to reply.

His image begins to fade. His mouth moves, but Castiel cannot hear what he is saying. It’s too quiet, indistinct as radio static.

“Dean,” he says, but whatever Dean says in reply is lost to him. “Dean!” He grasps at Dean’s hand. His fingers go through it like water.

The dream root is wearing off.

Castiel has been resigned to his fate, glad at least to have helped Sam with his last moments of consciousness—but now, panic grips his heart. He does not want to leave. He does not want to be back in that nowhere-place, without Dean, alone.

He reaches out, meaning to brush Dean’s face with his fingers. To feel the stubble at his jaw, the soft shapes of his lips.

He touches empty air. Dean is gone.

The dream is gone. Castiel is back in nothingness.

 

 

\----

 

He wakes in a room in the bunker.

No: in _Dean’s_ room in the bunker.

That is what he notices first, before it occurs to him to wonder that he is awake, that he is alive and in the real world. One of the lamps is lit, and in the dim light, he makes out the objects beside Dean’s bed: a book, his gun, the collection of faded photographs he keeps propped against the lamp. The pillow beneath his head smells of Dean’s hair gel.

Nothing more. The strange tang of dream root is absent from the air.

Castiel breathes in experimentally, turns his head to feel the fabric of the bedcovers rub against his cheek.

It’s more bristly than he expects. He has what he judges to be a few days’ worth of stubble.

He is not dreaming.

His heart sounds in his ears. He feels as though it might burst with amazement.

Castiel sits up, and there’s a movement in the shadows beside the bed, on the side without the lamp. He is not overwhelmed enough to have thrown caution to the winds: he stills, peering warily into the dark. It hurts his eyes a little, and he registers that his head still aches, though without the blinding, unbearable pain to which he has grown accustomed.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice, unsteady with relief. “Hey, hey, Cas.” Dean is leaning over him, then, his hands finding Castiel’s shoulders and urging him to lie back down. He looks very tired, but his eyes shine. “Don’t try to get up. You gotta take it easy.”

Castiel peers up at him. Would gaze into his soul to get a closer read on his emotions, but cannot see it.

He cannot see Dean’s soul.

He blinks. Nothing changes. “What happened?”

“Kind of a long story.” Dean scrubs a hand over his face. “Just let me—I just gotta—hang on.” He gets to his feet, points at Castiel as he heads for the door. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Dean? What’s going on?”

There’s no reply, but before Castiel can decide to get up and follow, Dean reappears in the doorway.

Over his shoulder, Sam grins. “Hey, Cas,” he says. “Good to finally see you awake.”

Castiel feels the smile that spreads over his face. “You too, Sam,” he says. “How did—?” He stops, catching sight of another figure out in the corridor, at Sam’s side. Too slight for Kevin. A woman. He frowns.

Sam follows his gaze, and when he turns back to Castiel, there is something apologetic in his expression. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “We’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”

He stands aside, and so does Dean—who isn’t looking Castiel in the eyes—and the woman steps into the room.

At the sight of her face, Castiel starts upright, slamming the back of his head on the shelf above Dean’s bed. He ignores the pain that blooms dully in the back of his skull—he’s had much worse lately, after all. His heartbeat quickens, a frightened-animal thing inside his chest.

It’s her. Ruth Tramontini. The witch.

And Sam and Dean are letting her walk freely around the bunker. No handcuffs; no protective sigils drawn on the walls.

Castiel told Dean. In the dream. He knows that he did. Unless he didn’t—unless it was truly just a dream, and he never really spoke to Dean at all, and now Tramontini has them both under some spell, and who knows what she will do to all of them—

“Look.” Tramontini’s voice cuts through his panic, brings him back into the room. “You’re freaked out. I get it.” She is looking at her hands, avoiding Castiel’s eyes. If he knew no better, he would say that she was… embarrassed.

He glances from Dean to Sam, and back again, utterly bewildered. Dean makes a face. “I don’t like this any more’n you do, believe me.” He exchanges a look with Sam, then meets Castiel’s gaze again, his shoulders slumping in resignation. “But she isn’t gonna hurt you.”

“How do you know?” Castiel gets out.

Tramontini takes a step closer to the bed—hands palms up in front of her, placating, like she’s expecting him to lash out. When he doesn’t, she closes the rest of the distance between them, and perches herself on the mattress, near Castiel’s feet.

She looks up, then. “So,” she says. “I, uh, I guess I owe you an apology.”

Castiel stares. He cannot see Tramontini’s soul, cannot read her intentions—but if the spell is gone, and she is here, surely that means she has undone what she did. Perhaps she truly regrets it? The way she looks at him, from under lowered eyelashes, as though in shame, suggests as much.

For a moment, Castiel honestly misses the spell. For all the pain it brought, it made him better at being human. Now, he has only his own woefully undeveloped instincts to rely on.

Millennia of experience tell him not to trust this, but Dean’s nod, caught out of the corner of his eye, tells him otherwise.

He grips the bedcovers tightly, takes a breath, and meets Tramontini’s eyes. “Thank you,” he says.

She gives him a weak smile. “Think I should be the one saying that.”

“I have to ask,” he says, then. “Why?”

Tramontini drops her gaze, letting out a sigh. “You got me at a really bad time,” she says. “And don’t get me wrong; that isn’t an excuse. I just—” She breaks off and bites her lower lip, taking a moment to compose herself. “I’ve been doing the healing thing a while now. Since my mom got sick a couple years back. It’s always been just the two of us—Dad cut out when I was a kid, I don’t really remember him.”

Her eyes are unfocused, her expression distant and sad. Though Castiel cannot see her soul, he feels the pang of a loss he can never understand.

“It’s a money-making thing, mostly,” she goes on. “Keeps us going. Mom’s too sick to work, and with the healing gig, at least I only have to be away from her a couple hours a day.”

Castiel regards her curiously. “If you can heal with your magic, why not use it to help your mother?”

Tramontini shakes her head. “I just treat the symptoms. My spells don’t last. I give people a few more months, give them hope for a little while—but it’s borrowed time. They start to deteriorate again eventually.”

Castiel sees the sadness play across her face. “Your mother,” he says. “She’s—deteriorating.”

“I never stopped looking. I have contacts. Other witches—even a couple hunters. Guess they figured they were better off keeping me alive when they realized I wasn’t hurting anyone.” She casts a cautious sideways glance at Sam and Dean, and it occurs to Castiel that she is trying to convince them, too. “I’ve been hearing whispers about angels for a few years now. When I read about the deaths in Rexford, the bright lights, I put two and two together, and I came to check it out.”

“You thought an angel might help you,” Castiel says. “Heal your mother.”

“I thought I might be able to persuade it,” Tramontini confirms, a hard set to her mouth that suggests she isn’t talking about reasoned arguments here. “I know some pretty powerful binding spells. When you told me the problem had been taken care of—well, I just figured you were one of the hunters who’d killed it.”

Castiel’s heart sinks a little as understanding dawns. “You thought I took away your chance to help your mother.”

She nods silently.

He closes his eyes, then opens them again; is surprised when his dull headache stays just that, instead of the familiar stabbing pain. “In a sense, you’re right,” he says, watching her face. It stays impassive. “I did kill Ephraim. But believe me when I say you wouldn’t have wanted his help.”

“Yeah. Your friends told me what he was.” Tramontini casts an eye in Sam and Dean’s direction. She goes quiet for a moment, then seems to gather herself and looks back at Castiel. “The spell I used on you—I’d planned to use it on myself, to find him. It’s supposed to be temporary. There’s a counter-spell to undo it once you’ve found what you’re looking for. The sight’s too much for the brain to take in, long-term. I’ve read about witches who used it too often, did themselves some serious damage.”

“The counter-spell—that’s what you used on me? That’s why I don’t—?” Castiel gestures vaguely in the direction of his head, and Tramontini nods.

“You should be fine,” she says. “Just—give me a call if you keep getting the headaches.” Another glance at Sam and Dean, and Castiel realizes the offer is insurance as much as it is kindness. They can’t call her if she isn’t alive. He can hardly blame her. The Winchesters are a terrifying prospect when their family is under threat. “I lashed out,” she says, then, to Castiel. “You didn’t deserve that crap. So, you know. Apology.” She holds out her hand. Castiel hesitates a moment, then shakes it.

Tramontini relaxes a little, the tense set of her shoulders dropping. She puts her head on one side, then, regarding him like a curiosity.

“You stood it a lot longer than most people would’ve,” she says. “I have to admit, I’m impressed. You must be something pretty special.”

Not anymore. Without the sight, Castiel will live—but he will live uselessly. He has nothing to offer Dean and Sam, now, and though he does not think they will send him away, the knowledge aches coldly in his guts.

He ducks his head. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m just a man.”

“Actually, about that.” It’s Sam’s voice. Castiel looks up. “I need to talk to you.”

 

 

\----

 

Dean shepherds Tramontini out. Castiel cannot hear their voices out in the corridor, but he assumes there is a warning that they know where she lives and will be back in less peaceful fashion if she ‘lashes out’ again.

He’s a little surprised that they don’t kill her anyway. That would be Dean’s favored option, in most circumstances, he’s sure. He must have allowed Sam to persuade him otherwise.

The thought speaks volumes; though Castiel is no longer sure of his ability to read them.

“So,” Sam says, once they are alone. “After you passed out—you remember any of that?”

Castiel frowns, thinking. “Yes,” he says, slowly. That dream-place feels as real as anything else did in the few days before Fremont. Realer, perhaps, without the haze of pain to obscure it. “I thought—I thought I heard your voice.”

He is no longer sure whether it truly happened. His thoughts are a jumble. The dream where he spoke to Dean must have been real, he supposes. How else would Dean have known who Tramontini really was? But it feels so strange to be alive again, to see the world without souls burning before his eyes. How to trust what he sees?

Sam smiles at him. “You didn’t just think it. I heard you, too. I saw what you showed me.”

“What I showed you?” Castiel says. Then goes quiet as the memory of that last prayer returns to him, blooming like a firework inside his chest. And now Sam is standing before him, conscious and whole. “It worked.”

“It did,” Sam agrees. His smile tightens, then. He glances toward the door, then, the sound of Dean’s and Kevin’s voices coming from down the corridor. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not say everything’s back to normal. What Dean did—well, I was pissed. I’m still pissed.” He looks back at Castiel. “But while I was out, before you got through to me? I felt like there was no point me being alive if I couldn’t save the world. Honestly, I think I’d felt like that for a long time. And you helped.” He pats Castiel’s shoulder, his big hand warm and grounding. “So, thanks.”

Castiel smiles back—genuinely, without pain. Then he frowns. “I’m glad to have helped, Sam. I truly am. But I don’t understand how.”

Sam shakes his head. “Me neither. Well, not exactly. But I’ve been looking into it. Kevin found some stuff on the angel tablet. It sounds like there’s kind of an aftereffect when an angel possesses somebody. You—they leave behind a trace of grace in the person when they go.”

Castiel nods. “That’s correct.”

“And we wondered if maybe the same thing happened when Metatron took your grace. You lost enough of it to make you human, but there was still a residue in there somewhere.”

“It’s possible,” Castiel admits. “Few angels have ever chosen to fall. We don’t—Heaven doesn’t have records.”

“We think that might be it,” Sam explains. “Somehow, that combined with the sight spell and it let you reach out to me. It let you send that bit of grace over to me while we were both unconscious.”

Both of them were in that between-place, where boundaries are less stable, where dream-logic sometimes prevails. Magic could work with that. Sam’s speculations make a kind of sense.

“It gave you the ability to heal yourself,” Castiel realizes. “My grace.”

“Pretty much,” Sam says. He glances down, and there is more in the look than can be expressed out loud. Castiel doesn’t need to see his soul to understand that. Sam clears his throat. “So, uh, we think it’s all gone now. You’re a hundred percent human.” His hand tightens on Castiel’s shoulder, and he looks down. “I’m sorry, Cas.”

Perhaps later, Castiel will feel the loss of it. That last part of his angelic self; that shred of possibility of ever being what he was. He is not naïve enough to think it will never matter.

But now, whole and healed, and with his family whole and healed around him, he feels only relief.

He sinks back against the pillows of Dean’s bed with a tired smile. “Don’t be,” he says, and pats Sam’s hand, and lets his eyes close.

 

 

\----

 

Slowly, Castiel’s strength begins to return. He guesses it is early afternoon when he falls asleep. By the time he wakes up, Sam is gone. The light has been turned out, and there is an extra blanket over him: the faintly scratchy gray one that Dean favors. It looks vaguely military-issue, and Castiel wonders whether it came from somewhere in the bunker, or from Dean’s father.

From down the corridor, he hears the distant clank of pots and pans. There’s a faint whiff of frying onions. His stomach growls.

It takes him by surprise. He has gotten used to the low-level nausea that accompanies being in constant pain, to forcing down food only so Dean won’t worry about him.

Castiel stretches and climbs out of bed, locking his hands above his head until his spine clicks. His shoulders ache—but his head doesn’t. He feels clear and light and _good_ for the first time in his whole human life.

He dresses in a pair of sweatpants and a faded t-shirt that he finds folded on the back of the chair. Dean’s slippers are beside the bed, and Castiel hesitates a second before toeing them on. A little too big for him, but they’ll serve for now. He opens the bedroom door, feeling a warm spark of relief when the lights don’t hurt his eyes, and pads down the corridor to the kitchen.

Dean is at the stove, pushing onions around a skillet. The line of his shoulders is tense. Castiel hears the sound of the television in the recreation room, and surmises that Sam is in there—avoiding Dean, rather than staying around to talk or help out with cleanup as he cooks.

He can hardly be blamed. As he said earlier, this will take time.

At the sound of Castiel’s footsteps on the tiles, though, Dean turns from the stove. A genuine smile breaks across his face, his eyelids creasing at the corners.

“Cas,” he says, and it’s all relief. “Lookin’ good, man. Though if you’re gonna stay here, we gotta get you some clothes of your own. It’s a fucking travesty, you walking around in a Stones t-shirt when I know for a fact you’ve never even listened to an album.”

Castiel lets himself smile, warmth blooming in his chest. “I can stay here?” he dares ask.

A tension he hadn’t realised was there fades from around Dean’s eyes. “Hell if I’m letting you leave,” Dean says, and Castiel hears, _You’re home_.

He will have to get used to reading human emotions the hard way again. But he thinks maybe he is already learning.

 

 

\----

 

“I never thanked you,” Castiel says, much later. “For sharing your dream with me.”

It is past midnight and they’re back in bed, having left Sam and Kevin in front of _some nerd crap_ (Dean’s words) on the TV. Castiel found himself yawning after dinner, though he had only been awake a few hours. He suspects Dean was rather glad of the excuse to disappear into the bedroom. The atmosphere between the brothers is still awkward, and Castiel knows it will not heal right away. Still, he feels hopeful tonight. They finally _have_ time; none of them is dying. That is rare and precious enough to be held tightly.

Dean blinks down at him. “Huh?” He’s lying on his side, propped up on one elbow as he looks into Castiel’s face. It’s a little disconcerting, being the one watched so closely, but Castiel understands the impulse. He is sure he would not be able to look away, either, if Dean were the one so recently in danger.

“Your dream, with the lake,” Castiel explains. “You used it to speak to me.” He pauses, biting his lip as his earlier doubts recur. “You did use it to speak to me?”

“Oh.” Dean’s expression clears. “Yeah. We figured you’d been there before, so it might be easier to get through to you that way. Well, actually, Sammy figured it out.” His gaze flicks downward, a shadow crossing his eyes.

Castiel reaches up, traces the line of Dean’s jaw with his thumb. “I wasn’t invited, last time,” he says. “So, thank you.” The dream is a private, peaceful thing, and Dean has few enough of those. Being invited there, instead of simply walking in, feels meaningful. It kindles the same warmth in him as being allowed to stay here, at the bunker.

“Uh, you’re welcome?” Dean gives him a puzzled look.

“I mean it. I know I’m of little use to you and Sam, like this. You came for me anyway.” Castiel’s voice quietens as he says it, and he drops his gaze. Gadreel is still out there, and Metatron, and Abaddon, and so many other dangers. Without his augmented sight, he doesn’t know what help he will be able to offer.

Dean sighs. “Cas,” he says, and then waits until Castiel meets his eyes. There is a softness in them that belies the stern set of his face. “I know you think healing things, or seeing monsters, or smiting them, or whatever, is all you got. And I mean, not that that stuff wasn’t awesome, because yeah, Superman. But it wasn’t any of that crap that fixed Sammy.” Dean pauses, ducks his head. There’s sadness in his voice, but not bitterness. “You made him wanna fight when I couldn’t. And I dunno, maybe that’s because you see the good things. God knows I can’t fucking see ‘em most days. I mean, I look at people, and I see victims or assholes. That’s pretty much it. But you were working in that shitty gas station, and you still managed to smile at every stranger who came through. You did that damn job like it meant something, people being able to get their coffee just right and have a clean pot to piss in. Like you could actually see how it would make their days better, you being nice to them. Seriously, when am I ever nice to anybody? But you are. You _make_ it matter. I don’t fucking know how, man, but you do.”

Dean goes quiet, then, his cheeks coloring. He looks down at his hands, fidgeting with the edge of the comforter.

Castiel cups his jaw, lifts his chin until Dean is looking at him again. “Maybe this is a start,” he says, gently. “At being nice.”

Dean snorts.

“But you are right,” Castiel goes on. “I do. See the good things. I’m looking at one of them right now.”

A beat, and then Dean groans and buries his face in the pillow. “Shut the fuck up,” he says, his voice muffled.

Castiel knows without seeing it that he is smiling. He nuzzles under the covers, his face pressed against the back of Dean’s shoulder, and smiles right back.

That night, he sleeps without pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and talk to me on: [Tumblr](http://anactorya.tumblr.com) | [LJ](http://anactoria.livejournal.com).


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